Now, it so happened that two of those windows were lighted—clearly showing that some one else was going to bed, in addition to Toby Siggs and his wife. Knowing nothing about the disposition of the various rooms upstairs, Philip was, for a time, at a loss what to do; being dreadfully afraid that he might rouse the wrong party and bring disaster upon himself. At last, tired with waiting, he determined to take the risk, and to throw a few small pebbles at the larger of the two lighted windows. This he did—sending the stones rattling smartly against the glass once or twice—and then crept into the darkness, and awaited results. Unfortunately, it happened that the chief guest room at the Chater Arms was the largest room upstairs; and that Mr. and Mrs. Siggs, in their modesty, and with an eye to business, occupied a smaller apartment. And in that guest room, at that particular time, reposed the important figure of Inspector Tokely, who had been stopped, in his projected return to London that afternoon, by the intelligence that his prisoner had broken jail, and was thought to be in the neighbourhood of Bamberton. At first, the rattle of the stones had no effect upon the sleeping officer of the Law; but Philip’s second attempt roused him from sleep, and drove him to the unwelcome thought that some one was playing practical jokes upon him, as a form of rustic humour. Not at all relishing this, he sprang out of bed, just as a third handful pattered against the panes. The indignant Tokely dashed to the window, and drew up the blind; then, unable to see anything, he flung up the window-sash, and poked out his head. “Who’s down there?” he cried out. “You’d better come out—because I know who you are, and I’ll lay you by the heels to-morrow morning, as sure as a gun. Now then—are you coming out of it?” Philip, who had drawn himself up in the darkest corner of the yard, horror-struck at his blunder, very naturally declining to obey the Inspector’s bidding, that indignant man continued to shout various threats of future punishment into the darkness, until he contrived to rouse his host and hostess; so that, in a minute or two, the second lighted window was raised, and old Toby Siggs put his head out, with a most prodigious nightcap upon it, and looked round at Tokely. “Wot’s all this?” he asked, in his slow heavy fashion. “If so be as you ’ave a pain anywheres, the Missis ’ll be on’y too glad to git up, an’ make a poultice, or anythink of that kind, double quick; on’y don’t go a ’owlin’ at the moon like that there—jist like a lost dorg—’cos it ain’t restful at this time o’ night.” “I’m not howling at the moon—or at anything else,” retorted Tokely, savagely. “And I’m not in pain, you idiot. Only some yokel has had the impudence to keep on shying pebbles at my window, this half hour past—by way of a joke, I suppose. I wish they’d try any one else’s window, for a change.”