A couple of nights later, when the door-bell rang at half-past one, the colonel felt somewhat angry, and he determined to stay in bed; but the person on the step below at last began to kick against the front door, when the colonel threw up the window and exclaimed,

“What do you want?”

It was the watchman, and he said,

“You know old Mrs. Biles up the street yer?  Well, I’ve just rung Biles up, and he says her rheumatism ain’t no better.  Thought you might want to know, so I called.  I felt kinder lonesome out here, too.”

As Colonel Coffin slammed the sash down he felt mad and murderous.  The next night, however, that faithful guardian applied the toe of his boot to the front door with such energy that the colonel leaped from bed, and protruding his head from the window said,

“I wish to gracious you’d stop kicking up this kind of fuss around here every night!  What do you mean, anyhow?”

“Why, I only stopped to tell you that Butterwick has two setter pups, and that I’d get you one if you wanted it.  Nothing mean about that, is there?”

The colonel uttered an ejaculatory criticism upon Butterwick and the pups as he closed the window, and a moment later he heard the watchman call up Smith, who lives next door, and remark to him,

“They tell me it’s a splendid season for bananas, Mr. Smith.”

When Coffin heard Smith hurling objurgations about bananas and watchmen out upon the midnight air, he knew it was immoral, but he felt his heart warm toward Smith.  The next time the watchman tried to get the colonel out by ringing and kicking the colonel refused to respond, and finally the watchman banged five barrels of his revolver.  Then Coffin came to the window in a rage.

“You eternal idiot,” he said, “if you don’t stop this racket at night, I’ll have you put under bonds to keep the peace.”

“Oh, all right,” replied the watchman.  “I had something important to tell you; but if you don’t want to hear it, very well; I kin keep it to myself.”

“Well, what is it?  Out with it!”

“Why, I heard to-day that the kangaroo down at the Park in the city can’t use one of its hind legs.  Rough on the Centennial, ain’t it?”

Then, as the colonel withdrew in a condition of awful rage, the watchman sauntered up the street to break the news to the rest of the folks.  On the next night a gang of burglars broke into Coffin’s house and ransacked it from top to bottom.  Toward morning Coffin heard them; and hastily dressing himself and seizing his revolver, he proceeded down stairs.  The burglars heard him coming and fled.  Then the colonel sprang his rattle and summoned the neighbors.  When they arrived, the colonel, in the course of conversation, made some remarks about the perfect uselessness of night-watchmen.  Thereupon Mr. Potts said,

“I saw that fellow Bones only an hour ago two squares above here, at McGinnis’s, routing McGinnis out to tell him that old cheese makes the best bait for catfish.”