heavy sleeping of the weary and tipsy travellers enabled him to enter
their chambers unobserved, and over the garments they had taken off he
poured the contents of the water-jug and water-bottle he found in each
room, and then laying the empty bottle and a tumbler on a chair beside
each sleeper's bed, he made it appear as if the drunken men had been dry
in the night, and, in their endeavours to cool their thirst, had upset the
water over their own clothes. The clothes of the little man, in
particular, Murphy took especial delight in sousing more profusely than
his neighbour's, and not content with taking his shoes, burnt his
stockings, and left the ashes in the dish of the candlestick, with just as
much unconsumed as would show what they had been. He then retired to the
parlour, and with many an internal chuckle at the thought of the morning's
hubbub, threw off his clothes and flinging himself on the shake-down Mrs.
Kelly had provided for him, was soon wrapt in the profoundest slumber,
from which he never awoke until the morning uproar of the inn aroused him.
He jumped from his lair and rushed to the scene of action, to soar in the
storm of his own raising; and to make it more apparent that he had been as
great a sufferer as the rest, he only threw a quilt over his shoulders and
did not draw on his stockings. In this plight he scaled the stairs and
joined the storming party, where the little man was leading the forlorn
hope, with his candlestick in one hand and the remnant of his burnt
stocking between the finger and thumb of the other.

"Look at that, sir!" he cried, as he held it up to the landlord.

The landlord could only stare.

"Bless me!" cried Murphy, "how drunk you must have been to mistake your
stocking for an extinguisher!"