Direful was the screaming at this formidable apparition—the fiddles ceased—the waltzers dropped their panting burdens, and the black band looked pale and aghast. “Who-o-o-p! go ahead!—come it strong!” continued Fydget. But he was again doomed to suffer an ejectment. “Hustle him out!” “Give us a ‘shinplaster’ then—them’s my terms.” It would not do—he was compelled to retire shinplasterless; but it rained so heavily that, nothing daunted, he marched up the alley-way, re-entered the house through the garden, and gliding noiselessly into the cellar, turned a large barrel over which he found there, and getting into it, went fast asleep “on first principles.” The company had departed—the servants were assembled in the kitchen preparatory to retiring for the night, when an unearthly noise proceeding from the barrel aforesaid struck upon their astonished ears. It was Fydget snoring, and his hearers, screaming, fled. Rallying, however, at the top of the stairs, they procured the aid of Mr. Lynx, who watched over the nocturnal destinies of an unfinished building in the vicinity, and who, having frequently boasted of his valour, felt it to be a point of honour to act bravely on this occasion. The sounds continued, and the “investigating committee,” with Mr. Lynx as chairman, advanced slowly and with many pauses. Lynx at last hurriedly thrust his club into the barrel, and started back to wait the result of the experiment. “Ouch!” ejaculated a voice from the interior, the word being one not to be found in the dictionaries, but which, in common parlance, means that a sensation too acute to be agreeable has been excited. “Hey!—hello!—come out of that,” said Lynx, as soon as his nerves had recovered tranquillity. “You are in a bad box whoever you are.” “Augh!” was the response, “no, I ain’t—I’m in a barrel.” “No matter,” added Lynx, authoritatively; “getting into another man’s barrel unbeknownst to him in the night-time, is burglary.” “That,” said Fydget, putting out his head like a terrapin, at which the women shrieked and retreated, and Lynx made a demonstration with his club—“that’s because you ain’t up to first principles—keep your stick out of my ribs—I’ve a plan, so there won’t be no burglary, which is this—no man have no more than he can use, and all other men mind their own business. Then, this ’ere barrel would be mine while I’m in it, and you’d be asleep—that’s the idea.” “It’s a logo-fogie!” exclaimed Lynx with horror—“a right down logo-fogie!” “Ah!” screamed the servants—“a logo-fogie!—how did it get out?—will it bite?—can’t you get a gun?”