"How-so-be, sir, I tries the landing door, and finds it open easy enough, and then I was inside the room, but what sort of a place it was I couldn't tell, for it was as dark as Ejup. Of course I expect it was a bedroom, and thinks as I should soon feel the bedstead, as would fill up a good bit o' the place. But fust of all I drops down upon my hands and knees; so as if anybody hit at me, or shot at me, or tried any o' them little games in the dark, as they'd most likely do it at the height of a man, why it would go over one, and only hit the furniture, which can be replaced, when you can't replace active and enterprising officers--leave alone being cut off in the flower of one's youth, you know. "Then I listens. All as still and as dark as could be. But still as it was, I could hear my heart go `beat, beat,' wonderful loud. "`Wish I'd a light,' I says to myself, but then it warn't no use wishing; and I didn't want to go to the people downstairs, so I begins feeling about as slow and as quiet as I could. "I soon finds out as it's a bedroom, for I rubs my knuckles up against the bed-post, and soon was close up alongside o' the ticking, when I thinks as I heered a noise, and darts back to the door in a moment; but all was still again, and I turns back, and then in a manner I got lost, and confused, and could not tell which way I was going, nor yet where was the door. "Now, I daresay that all sounds werry queer; but perhaps you don't know how easy it is to be lost in a dark room as you've never been in before, even if it is a little 'un; and if so be as you thinks werry little of it, jest you get a handkercher tied tight over yer eyes, and do as you does at Christmas time--`turn round three times and ketch who you may,' and then see where you are in two twinklings. "Well, first of all I hits my hand again a chair; then I butts my head again the corner of as hard a chest o' drawers as ever I did feel in my life; and then I kicks up such a clatter with the washstand as would have a'most alarmed the house; but I keeps down on my hands and knees, being suspicious of an ambushment, till last of all I feels my way round to the bedside again, and when I was far enough I reaches my hand lightly over, and lays it on the bed, and then I jumps as though I was shot, for I felt somebody's leg under the clothes.