This precaution, taken under my father's roof, as though he were in a
den of thieves, angered me, and I gave a butt with my shoulder which
cleared the box out of the way, and enabled me to enter the room.

The man Saxon was sitting up in bed, staring about him as though he were
not very certain for the moment where he was. He had tied a white
kerchief round his head by way of night bonnet, and his hard-visaged,
clean-shaven face, looking out through this, together with his bony
figure, gave him some resemblance to a gigantic old woman. The bottle
of usquebaugh stood empty by his bedside. Clearly his fears had been
realised, and he had had an attack of the Persian ague.

'Ah, my young friend!' he said at last. 'Is it, then, the custom of
this part of the country to carry your visitor's rooms by storm or
escalado in the early hours of the morning?'

'Is it the custom,' I answered sternly, 'to barricade up your door when
you are sleeping under the roof-tree of an honest man? What did you
fear, that you should take such a precaution?'

'Nay, you are indeed a spitfire,' he replied, sinking back upon the
pillow, and drawing the clothes round him, 'a feuerkopf as the Germans
call it, or sometimes tollkopf, which in its literal significance
meaneth a fool's head. Your father was, as I have heard, a strong and a
fierce man when the blood of youth ran in his veins; but you, I should
judge, are in no way behind him. Know, then, that the bearer of papers
of import, _documenta preciosa sed periculosa_, is bound to leave nought
to chance, but to guard in every way the charge which hath been
committed to him. True it is that I am in the house of an honest man,
but I know not who may come or who may go during the hours of the night.