Disorder was thereupon the order of the night, while the behaviour of the outrageous Warren passed belief. At the first sound of the tumult he deliberately fired off his pistol through the top of his hat, and discharged the other barrel into a rather valuable hunting picture which hung above the sideboard. He then leapt through the open window into the garden, rolled himself in the mud, rose and galloped off into the darkness, shouting “This way! Follow me: I’ve got the scoundrels! Help here, help!” I need not point out that these expressions were calculated to give an utterly false impression of the situation and circumstances. I had been grossly deceived, as the rest of the family were now about to be. Squire Smithson came down the front stairs with a life-preserver, and my hibernating footman rushed down the back stairs with another. The Squire kicked an umbrella-stand with his naked foot, and stopped a moment to talk to himself. This gave the hireling some advantage of ground, and when the head of the house reached his dining-room window, he found a man half-way out of it. It was too dark to distinguish friend or foe, and Squire Smithson, making a dash at the figure, brought down his life-preserver with considerable brute force. I cannot pretend to say I was sorry for this. The injured domestic screamed, and was about to beg for mercy, when a mutual recognition occurred, and he contented himself with giving warning. Then they tumbled out of the window together, and hastened to where great shouting arose from a distant shrubbery. A tramp, hearing the riot, got over the wall of the kitchen garden at the back of the house to help, and fell through the roof of a vinery. There he was ultimately discovered, cut to ribbons, and it took him all his time for an hour to explain his intentions. The dog, of course, began barking now as if he had known all from the first, and only waited the right moment; the maids were screaming in pairs from the different windows, and some fool in the house (the page-boy, I imagine) was beating the dinner-gong--doubtless to conceal his own cowardly emotions. For my own part, I was in twenty places at once, whirling through the dark air, issuing directions, explaining everything in dumb show, and making the entire concern as clear as daylight. But nobody paid the very slightest attention to me. Warren at length returned, breathless and bedraggled. He recovered with great apparent effort, gave utterance to a succession of dastardly falsehoods, and became the hero of the hour.