In the middle of our expedition there came the well-known whistle,
echoing about the chimneys, with which it was the custom to recall us to
dinner. How else could you make people hear who might be cutting a
knobbed stick in the copse half a mile away or bathing in the lake? We
had to jump down with a run; and then came the difficulty; for black
dusty cobwebs, the growth of fifty years, clothed us from head to foot.
There was no brushing or picking them off, with that loud whistle
repeated every two minutes.

The fact where we had been was patent to all; and so the chairs got
burned--but one, which was rickety. After which a story crept out, of a
disjointed skeleton lying in a corner under the thatch. Though just a
little suspicious that this might be a _ruse_ to frighten us from a
second attempt, we yet could not deny the possibility of its being true.
Sometimes in the dusk, when I sat poring over 'Koenigsmark, the Robber,'
by the little window in the cheese-room, a skull seemed to peer down the
trapdoor. But then I had the flintlock by me for protection.

There were giants in the days when that gun was made; for surely no
modern mortal could have held that mass of metal steady to his shoulder.
The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very
good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the
window at the old mare feeding in the meadow below by the brook, and a
'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger
behind the hedge, little dreaming that the deadly tube was levelled at
them. At least this practice and drill had one useful effect--the eye
got accustomed to the flash from the pan, instead of blinking the
discharge, which ruins the shooting. Almost everybody and everything on
the place got shot dead in this way without knowing it.