My apprehensions were but too well-founded, as I experienced on the following evening. It was after dark, and I was proceeding along the passage near the pantry, with a lighted candle in my hand, when my enemy suddenly sprung out from some recess where he had been lying in ambush. He endeavoured to throw his arms around me, exclaiming, as he did so: "Now's our time, my pet! I can't _possibly_ wait no longer; and no one's looking, so you needn't purtend not to like it." Moved by rage and fright to defend myself at all hazards, I had recourse to the only weapon available; and against the odious face and lips that were approaching mine I thrust the candle that I carried. He tried to avoid the impending peril by blowing out the light; but either he was too much confused, or else I was too quick for him, and he failed to extinguish it. In another instant there was a strong smell of burning hair, and one of his cherished whiskers was on fire. He let go of me with an oath, and an exclamation of pain and fear--for he was a shocking coward; and I passed on, quivering with excitement, and divided between exultation at my escape and self-hatred for having subjected myself to the disgrace of being thus forced into a sort of romping struggle with a valet. When next I saw him he bore considerable traces of the contest. The hairy appendages to his face, in which he delighted, were gone; for the whisker I had set on fire had been so much destroyed that it had had to be shaved off, and then of course its companion had been obliged to follow suit. And besides this, there were on his lips and cheek sundry inflamed and angry-looking burns and blisters, which I regarded with vindictive satisfaction. When the other servants commented on the change in his appearance, and inquired into the cause thereof, he accounted for it by a story--which I did not trouble myself to contradict--about his having had an accident with an unusually explosive match, the head of which had flown off and burnt him. There was nothing so abominably dangerous, he said, with savage emphasis, as an ill-made thing like that, going off all of a sudden, and flaring and skipping about like mad, when it looked as safe and quiet as possible. Regular man traps, he considered them to be and if he could have his way, they should be burnt, or got rid of somehow, every one of them. As he spoke he cast a malignant glance at me, which convinced me that I had incurred his undying resentment, and that in his abuse of the imaginary match he was conveying his opinion about my deserts.