There, seated in an arm-chair, she waits, and waits, and waits, hope and anxiety recording time as it passes.  The servant has seen Daddy safe in his room, and joins her missus, where, by the force of habit, she coils herself at her feet, and sleeps.  She has not long remained in this position when loud singing breaks upon her ear; louder and louder it vibrates through the music of the storm, and approaches.  Now she distinctly recognises the sharp voice of M’Carstrow, which is followed by loud rappings at the door of the basement hall.  M’Carstrow, impatiently, demands entrance.  The half-sleeping servant, startled at the noise, springs to her feet, rubs her eyes, bounds down the stairs, seizes the globular lamp, and proceeds to open the door.  Franconia, a candle in her hand, waits at the top of the stairs.  She swings back the door, and there, bespattered with mud, face bleeding and distorted, and eyes glassy, stands the chivalrous M’Carstrow.  He presents a sorry picture; mutters, or half growls, some sharp imprecations; makes a grasp at the girl, falls prostrate on the floor.  Attempting to gain his perpendicular, he staggers a few yards-the girl screaming with fright-and groans as his face again confronts the tiles.  To make the matter still worse, three of his boon companions follow him, and, almost in succession, pay their penance to the floor, in an indescribable catacomb.

“I tell you what, Colonel! if that nigger gal a’ yourn don’t stand close with her blazer we’ll get into an all-fired snarl,” says one, endeavouring to extricate himself and regain his upright.  After sundry ineffectual attempts, surging round the room in search of his hat, which is being very unceremoniously transformed into a muff beneath their entangled extremes, he turns over quietly, saying, “There’s something very strange about the floor of this establishment,—­it don’t seem solid; ’pears how there’s ups and downs in it.”  They wriggle and twist in a curious pile; endeavour to bring their knees out of “a fix”—­to free themselves from the angles which they are most unmathematically working on the floor.  Working and twisting,—­now staggering, and again giving utterance to the coarsest language,—­one of the gentry—­they belong to the sporting world-calls loudly for the colonel’s little ’oman.  Regaining his feet, he makes indelicate advances towards the female servant, who, nearly pale with fright—­a negro can look pale—­runs to her mistress at the top of the stairs.

He misses the frightened maid, and seats himself on the lowest step of the stairs.  Here he delivers a sort of half-musical soliloquy, like the following:  “Gentlemen! this kind a’ thing only happens at times, and isn’t just the square thing when yer straight; but—­seein’ how southern life will be so—­when a body get’s crooked what’s got a wife what don’t look to matters and things, and never comes to take care on a body when he’s done gone, he better shut up shop.  Better be lookin’ round to see what he can scare up!”