The next thing to be done was to bolt the door. He succeeded very well with the bolt at the top, but failed signally with the bolt at the bottom, which appeared particularly difficult to deal with that night. It first of all creaked fiercely on being moved--then stuck spitefully just at the entrance of the staple--then slipped all of a sudden, under moderate pressure, and ran like lightning into its appointed place, with a bang of malicious triumph. “If that doesn’t bring my father down”--thought Zack, listening with all his ears, and stifling the hiccups with all his might--“he’s a harder sleeper than I take him for.” But no door opened, no voice called, no sound of any kind broke the mysterious stillness of the bedroom regions. Zack sat down on the stairs, and took his boots off, got up again with some little difficulty, listened, took his candlestick, listened once more, whispered to himself, “Now for it!” and began the perilous ascent to his own room. He held tight by the banisters, only falling against them, and making them crack from top to bottom once, before he reached the drawing-room landing. He ascended the second flight of stairs without casualties of any kind, until he got to the top step, close by his father’s bed-room door. Here, by a dire fatality, the stifled hiccups burst beyond all control; and distinctly asserted themselves by one convulsive yelp, which betrayed Zack into a start of horror. The start shook his candlestick: the extinguisher, which lay loose in it, dropped out, hopped playfully down the stone stairs, and rolled over the landing with a loud and lively ring--a devilish and brazen flourish of exultation in honor of its own activity. “Oh Lord!” faintly ejaculated Zack, as he heard somebody’s voice speaking, and somebody’s body moving, in the bed-room; and remembered that he had to mount another flight of stairs--wooden stairs this time--before he got to his own quarters on the garret-floor. He went up, however, directly, with the recklessness of despair; every separate stair creaking and cracking under him, as if a young elephant had been retiring to bed instead of a young man. He blew out his light, tore off his clothes, and, slipping between the sheets, began to breathe elaborately, as if he was fast asleep--in the desperate hope of being still able to deceive his father, if Mr. Thorpe came up stairs to look after him.