"Now we must be cautious," I said, in a low tone, as we proceeded to traverse the passage, on each side of which were the rooms occupied by the servants. We took off our shoes and advanced on tip-toe. At the far end of the passage we heard a sound like a trombone. That was the butler; we knew of his snoring propensities, and so were not alarmed. His door was open; so was his mouth--I could see that plainly, as I passed, by the dim light of a candle which he always burned at night. The butler was excessively fat. I merely mention this because it accounts for the fact of his not awaking when we unlocked the street door. Fat people are not easily wakened. The lock of the door was an old-fashioned large one. It grated slightly as Jack turned the key; then at a certain point the key lost control over it, and it shot back with a report like a pistol-shot! My heart flew to my mouth, and almost choked me. The butler gave a double snort and turned in his bed as Jack and I darted round an angle of the wall and hid in a dark corner. The butler soon gave unquestionable evidence that he had not been thoroughly aroused, and we were about to issue from our place of concealment, when the door of our man-servant's room opened, and he peeped out. Edwards--that was his name--was a stout young fellow, and we felt certain that he would not rest satisfied until he had found out the cause of the noise. We were right. He stepped cautiously into the passage with a poker in his hand. My heart sank within me. Just at that moment a cat darted across the passage with its back and tail up, and its eyes glaring. Edwards flung the poker at it, missed the cat, and knocked over an old tin umbrella-stand, with which the poker made a hideous clatter on the stone floor of the passage. "Ha! you brute! Wot? it's you as is makin' all that row, is it?" "Oh, dear, Edwards, what's happened?" cried a shrill voice from the other end of the passage--it was cook. "Oh, nothin', only the cat," replied the man as he sauntered into the butler's room. The butler seemed at that moment to have been smitten with a fit of apoplexy--we could see him from our dark corner;--he grew purple in the face, gasped once or twice, choked awfully, and then sat up in bed staring like a maniac. "Oh! Jack," I whispered in horror. "Don't be alarmed; it's only his usual way of waking up. I've seen him do it often." "What noise is that? What's going on down there?" cried a deep bass voice in the distance. It was my father. No one replied. Presently my father's bedroom bell rang with extreme violence. Edwards rushed out of the butler's room. The butler fell back, opened his mouth, and pretended to be asleep--snoring moderately. This of itself would have undeceived any one, for when the old hypocrite was really asleep he never snored _moderately_. The cook and housemaid uttered two little shrieks and slammed their respective doors, while the bell rang violently a second time.