His feet immediately touched the bottom; he stood erect, little above his middle, and quite out of the main current, within half-a-dozen steps of the bank, and he found himself—­he scarcely knew how—­on terra firma, impounded in a little flower-garden, with lilacs and laburnums, and sweet-briars, and, through a window close at hand, whom should he see but Dangerfield, who was drying his hands in a towel; and, as Cluffe stood for a moment, letting the water pour down through his sleeves, he further saw him make some queer little arrangements, and eventually pour out and swallow a glass of brandy, and was tempted to invoke his aid on the spot; but some small incivilities which he had bestowed upon Dangerfield, when he thought he cherished designs upon Aunt Rebecca, forbade; and at that moment he spied the little wicket that opened upon the road, and Dangerfield stept close up to the window, and cried sternly, ‘Who’s there?’ with his grim spectacles close to the window.

The boyish instinct of ‘hide and seek’ took possession of Cluffe, and he glided forth from the precincts of the Brass Castle upon the high road, just as the little hall-door was pushed open, and he heard the harsh tones of Dangerfield challenging the gooseberry bushes and hollyhocks, and thrashing the evergreens with his cane.

Cluffe hied straight to his lodgings, and ordered a sack posset.  Worthy Mrs. Mason eyed him in silent consternation, drenched and dishevelled, wild, and discharging water from every part of his clothing and decorations, as he presented himself without a hat, before her dim dipt candle in the hall.

’I’ll take that—­that vessel, if you please, Sir, that’s hanging about your neck,’ said the mild and affrighted lady, meaning Puddock’s guitar, through the circular orifice of which, under the chords, the water with which it was filled occasionally splashed.

‘Oh—­eh?—­the instrument?—­confound it!’ and rather sheepishly he got the gray red and gold ribbon over his dripping head, and placing it in her hand without explanation, he said—­’A warming-pan as quickly as may be, I beg, Mrs. Mason—­and the posset, I do earnestly request.  You see—­I—­I’ve been nearly drowned—­and—­and I can’t answer for consequences if there be one minute’s delay.

And up he went streaming, with Mrs. Mason’s candle, to his bed-room, and dragged off his clinging garments, and dried his fat body, like a man coming out of a bath, and roared for hot water for his feet, and bellowed for the posset and warming-pan, and rolled into his bed, and kept the whole house in motion.

And so soon as he had swallowed his cordial, and toasted his sheets, and with the aid of his man rolled himself in a great blanket, and clapped his feet in a tub of hot water, and tumbled back again into his bed, he bethought him of Puddock, and ordered his man to take his compliments to Captain Burgh and Lieutenant Lillyman, the tenants of the nearest lodging-house, and to request either to come to him forthwith on a matter of life or death.