"Do you wait here with Mrs. Lewis a minute," said Grimaldi's mother, "and I will go into the house; don't mind me unless you hear me scream; then come to my assistance." So saying, she courageously entered the passage, descended the stairs, entered the kitchen, hastily struck a light, and on lighting a candle and looking round, discovered that the place had been plundered of almost everything it contained. She was running up stairs to communicate their loss, when Grimaldi and his friends arrived. Hearing what had occurred, they entered the house in a body, and proceeded to search it, narrowly, thinking it probable that some of the thieves, surprised upon the premises, might be still lurking there. In they rushed, the party augmented by the arrival of two watchmen,--chosen, as the majority of that fine body of men invariably were, with a specific view to their old age and infirmities,--and began their inspection: the women screaming and crying, and the men all shouting together. The house was in a state of great disorder and confusion, but no thieves were to be seen; the cupboards were forced, the drawers had been broken open, and every article they contained had been removed, with the solitary exception of a small net shawl, which had been worked by Miss Hughes, and given by her to her chosen mother-in-law. Leaving the others to search the house, and the females to bewail their loss, which was really a very severe one, Grimaldi beckoned a Mr. King, one of the persons who had accompanied him home from the theatre, and suggested in a whisper that they should search the garden together. King readily complied, and he having armed himself with a heavy stick, and Grimaldi with an old broadsword which he had hastily snatched from its peg on the first alarm, they crept cautiously into the back garden, which was separated from those of the houses on either side by a wall from three to four feet high, and from a very extensive piece of pasture-land beyond it at the bottom, by another wall two or three feet higher. It was a dark night, and they groped about the garden for some time, but found nobody. Grimaldi sprang upon the higher wall, and looking over the lower one, descried a man in the act of jumping from the wall of the next garden. Upon seeing another figure the robber paused, and taking it for that of his comrade in the darkness of the night, cried softly, "Hush! hush! is that you?" "Yes!" replied Grimaldi, getting as near him as he could. Seeing that the man, recognising the voice as a strange one, was about to jump down, he dealt him a heavy blow with the broadsword. He yelled out loudly, and stopping for an instant, as if in extreme pain, dropped to the ground, limped off a few paces, and was lost in the darkness.