‘No, fool, it is not if you keep yourself quiet.’ ‘I will.’ Blodget ran back to the door in a moment, and he drew it close shut. ‘I’m sure I heard a voice,’ said the same person. ‘Kitty—Kitty, I say. The wench is fast asleep. Kitty, I say.’ ‘Yes, madam,’ said a sleepy voice, and a door opened from the lady’s room into another smaller one that adjoined it, and a young girl, in her night dress, appeared. ‘Did you hear anything?’ ‘Yes, ma’m.’ ‘What?’ ‘You call me, ma’m.’ ‘Tut—tut! I don’t mean that; but did you hear anything else before I called you?’ ‘No, ma’m.’ ‘Well, I thought I did.’ ‘You was a dreaming, ma’m, I suppose.’ ‘I suppose I was. See if the night-bolt is all right, Kitty, before you go to bed again.’ ‘Yes, ma’m.’ ‘I feel so nervous to-night; I don’t know why.’ Blodget felt there was danger now unless he could adroitly put the night-bolt in its place again. The difficulty to do so without being seen, and in a hurry, too, without making any noise, was very great, but if any man living could do that, that man was Blodget. Kitty, fortunately for him, was half asleep, and she shuffled along the floor in such an odd, devious kind of way, with her eyes scarcely open enough to see at all where she was going, that she gave Blodget every chance. It happened, too, that as she went she completely obstructed the lady’s view of the door. Blodget put his hand in the little orifice he had cut in the panel, and replaced the night-bolt. He was only just in time. ‘Is it all right?’ said the lady. ‘Oh, yes, ma’m.’ ‘You are sure?’ ‘Yes, ma’m.’ ‘Then it could not have been anything surely; I was dreaming. But it is no matter, you can go to bed again, Kitty. Dear me, what are you about now?’ Kitty had, in her half sleepy state, ran against the foot of the bed and shaken it well. ‘Eh? Oh, ma’m, I beg your pardon, I think I am a little drowsy, you see, ma’m.’ ‘A little drowsy indeed! Plague take the girl, she is dead asleep. Go to bed directly.’ ‘Yes, ma’m.’ Kitty did manage to steer herself now clear of the various articles of furniture in her mistress’s room, and to pass through the door that led to her own, and in another moment she was again fast asleep. ‘Dear me,’ said the lady, ‘I do feel nervous to-night, to be sure, and I don’t know why.’ Ting—ting—ting! went the little bell of her repeater watch as she pressed the spring of it. ‘Three o’clock,’ she said. ‘Well, I’d better try to go to sleep, I suppose, while I can.’ She did not utter another word, and in a few moments the most deathlike silence was in the room again. Blodget put his hand in the little circular hole in the door, and drew up the bolt once more. ‘Curses upon all this delay,’ he said to himself, ‘we shall have the daylight upon us soon.’ This was indeed so, as another hour would without doubt bring the dawn, and then the situation of Blodget and his companions in iniquity would be rather perilous.