This is, however, the sole instance of Mrs. B.’s having ever taken it in hand to subdue her own alarms.  It is I who, ever since her marriage, have done the duty, and more than the duty, of an efficient house-dog, which before that epoch, I understand, was wont to be discharged by one of her younger sisters.  Not seldom, in these involuntary rounds of mine, I have become myself the cause of alarm or inconvenience to others.  Our little foot-page, with a courage beyond his years, and a spirit worthy of a better cause, very nearly transfixed me with the kitchen spit as I was trying, upon one occasion, the door of his own pantry.  Upon another nocturnal expedition, I ran against a human body in the dark—­that turned out to be my brother-in-law’s, who was also in search of robbers—­with a shock to both our nervous systems such as they have not yet recovered from.  It fell to my lot, upon a third, to discover one of the rural police up in our attics, where, in spite of the increased powers lately granted to the county constabulary, I could scarcely think he was entitled to be.  I once presented myself, an uninvited guest, at a select morning entertainment—­it was at 1.30 A.M.—­given by our hired London cook to nearly a dozen of her male and female friends.  No wonder that Mrs. B. had “staked her existence” that night that she had heard the area gate “go.”  When I consider the extremely free and unconstrained manner in which I was received, poker and all, by that assembly, my only surprise is that they did not signify their arrivals by double knocks at the front door.

On one memorable night, and on one only, have I found it necessary to use that formidable weapon which habit has rendered as familiar to my hand as its flower to that of the Queen of Clubs.

The grey of morning had just begun to steal into our bedchamber, when Mrs. B. ejaculated with unusual vigour, “Henry, Henry, they’re in the front drawing-room; and they’ve just knocked down the parrot screen.”

“My love,” I was about to observe, “your imaginative powers have now arrived at the pitch of clairvoyance,” when a noise from the room beneath us, as if all the fireirons had gone off together with a bang, compelled me to acknowledge, to myself at least, that there was something in Mrs. B.’s alarms at last.  I trod downstairs as noiselessly as I could, and in almost utter darkness.  The drawing-room door was ajar, and through the crevice I could distinguish, despite the gloom, as many as three muffled figures.  They were all of them in black clothing, and each wore over his face a mask of crape, fitting quite closely to his features.  I had never been confronted by anything so dreadful before.  Mrs. B. had cried “Wolf!” so often that I had almost ceased to believe in wolves of this description at all.  Unused to personal combat, and embarrassed by the novel circumstance under which I found myself, I was standing undecided on the landing, when I caught that well-known whisper