“No,” answered Israel, “and the beach at Dover ain’t very smooth either.  I guess, upon second thought, you had better not try ’em on at all.  Besides, I am a simple sort of a soul—­eccentric they call me—­and don’t like my boots to go out of my sight.  Ha! ha!”

“What are you laughing at?” said the fellow testily.

“Odd idea!  I was just looking at those sad old patched boots there on your feet, and thinking to myself what leaky fire-buckets they would be to pass up a ladder on a burning building.  It would hardly be fair now to swop my new boots for those old fire-buckets, would it?”

“By plunko!” cried the fellow, willing now by a bold stroke to change the subject, which was growing slightly annoying; “by plunko, I believe we are getting nigh Dover.  Let’s see.”

And so saying, he sprang up the ladder to the deck.  Upon Israel following, he found the little craft half becalmed, rolling on short swells almost in the exact middle of the channel.  It was just before the break of the morning; the air clear and fine; the heavens spangled with moistly twinkling stars.  The French and English coasts lay distinctly visible in the strange starlight, the white cliffs of Dover resembling a long gabled block of marble houses.  Both shores showed a long straight row of lamps.  Israel seemed standing in the middle of the crossing of some wide stately street in London.  Presently a breeze sprang up, and ere long our adventurer disembarked at his destined port, and directly posted on for Brentford.

The following afternoon, having gained unobserved admittance into the house, according to preconcerted signals, he was sitting in Squire Woodcock’s closet, pulling off his boots and delivering his dispatches.

Having looked over the compressed tissuey sheets, and read a line particularly addressed to himself, the Squire, turning round upon Israel, congratulated him upon his successful mission, placed some refreshment before him, and apprised him that, owing to certain suspicious symptoms in the neighborhood, he (Israel) must now remain concealed in the house for a day or two, till an answer should be ready for Paris.

It was a venerable mansion, as was somewhere previously stated, of a wide and rambling disorderly spaciousness, built, for the most part, of weather-stained old bricks, in the goodly style called Elizabethan.  As without, it was all dark russet bricks, so within, it was nothing but tawny oak panels.

“Now, my good fellow,” said the Squire, “my wife has a number of guests, who wander from room to room, having the freedom of the house.  So I shall have to put you very snugly away, to guard against any chance of discovery.”

So saying, first locking the door, he touched a spring nigh the open fire-place, whereupon one of the black sooty stone jambs of the chimney started ajar, just like the marble gate of a tomb.  Inserting one leg of the heavy tongs in the crack, the Squire pried this cavernous gate wide open.