dusty powder-horn, the only thing in that room at all to my
taste. I stuck it into my belt with a scrap of spunyarn, feeling
that it made me a wonderful piratical figure. If I had had a
lantern I should have been a very king there.

As I sat among the rubbish there, with my pistol (a sailmaker's
fid) in my belt, it occurred to me that I would sit up till
everyone had gone to bed. Then, at eleven or twelve o'clock, I
would, I thought, creep downstairs, to explore all over the
house, down even to the cellars. It shocked me when I remembered
that I was locked in. I dared not pick the lock of that door. My
scheme (after all) would have to wait for another night, when the
difficulties would be less. That scheme of mine has waited until
the present time. Though I never thought it, that was the last
hour I was to spend in my uncle's house. I walked past it, only
the other day, thinking how strange my life has been, feeling
sad, too, that I should never know to what room a door at the end
of the upper passage led. Well, I never shall know, now. I was a
wild, disobedient young rogue. Read on.

When I decided not to pick the lock of my door I thought of the
mysterious Mr. Jermyn as an alternative excitement. I crept to my
window to look out at the house, watching it with a sort of
terrified pleasure, half expecting to see a ghost flapping his
wings, outside the window.

I was surprised to see that the window of the upper floor (which
I knew to be uninhabited) was open. I watched it, (it was just
opposite) hoping that something would happen. Presently two men
came quickly up the lane from the river. As they neared the house