As soon as he had closed the door, we were on the march.  We turned the corner and took the road to the right.  The walking was smoother here, and the street broader.  We were soon past most of the shanties, and following a country road, where the buildings were far apart.  They seemed to be large houses, set back from the road, with carefully kept lawns.  Mr. Daddles stopped and peered at one of them through the fog.

“Here it is, I think.  This one—­or the next.  No; it’s this one, I remember the fence.  It would never do to walk right up the front path when you’re going to crack a crib.  We’ll have to get in a back window, anyway, so we’d better go a little farther down the road, get over the wall, circle round, and come up from the rear.”

We carried out this plan, so far as getting over the wall, and then set out across a field.  This was high ground, but the village behind us was still covered with the fog, and all we could see in its direction was a white cloud of vapor.  The road we had just left wound on, down the hill again, and toward what might have been a dark clump of trees.  The grass in the field was short and scrubby, and worn quite bare in places.  There was a path which Mr. Daddles knew, and this we followed in single file.

All of a sudden we heard a strange, thumping sound, right in front of us.  We stopped short.  There was a dark, indistinct mass of something moving slowly toward us.  It seemed to be humped up, like a man crawling forward on his hands and knees.  Almost as soon as we stopped, it—­whatever it was—­stopped too.  It was a very unpleasant thing to find in a lonely field, in the middle of the night, and as I stared at it, I felt a curious prickling sensation run all over me.

We all stood in perfect silence.  So did the thing.  It looked like a man, only it was a very big and broad man, and also a very low and stumpy one, as I said.  Why he should be crawling along in that open field, on his hands and knees, was something I could not understand.  Unless,—­and this gave me another chilly feeling—­ unless he were a real burglar.  I wanted to run, but I was ashamed to do so for fear of what the others would think.  Moreover, although I was afraid to stay there, I was also afraid to run, for I didn’t like the idea of that thing chasing me through the fog.

So we all stood there in a group.  At last Mr. Daddles stepped toward the thing.

“What do you want?” he said, in a low tone.

There was no answer.  The thing stayed perfectly motionless.  This was getting terrible.  I could feel my heart thumping away, and my temples seemed to be bursting with the blood which was pumped into them.

“What do you want?” said Mr. Daddles again; “come, who are you and what do you want?”

He took another step toward the thing, and then suddenly jumped back.  The thing seemed to sway toward us, and then it uttered a horribly loud: