I do not believe there was a single lock or bolt or bar on any door in the whole of the little wooden house: the large plate-chest stood outside in the verandah, and my dressing-case could have been carried off through the ever-open bedroom window by an enterprising thief of ten years old.

As for my two maids,--the only human beings within reach,--they were as perfectly useless on any emergency as if they had been wax dolls.

One of them had the habit of fainting if anything happened, and the other used to tend her until she revived, when they both sat still and shrieked.

Their nerves had once been tested by a carpenter, who was employed about the house, and cut his hand badly; on another occasion by the kitchen chimney which took fire; and that was the way they behaved each time.

So it was useless to look upon their presence as any safeguard; indeed one of them speedily detected a fancied likeness to Burgess in one of the poor swaggers, and shrieked every time she saw him.
We were indeed three "lone, 'lorn women," all through that weary night.
I could not close my eyes; but laid awake listening to the weka's shrill call, or the melancholy cry of the bitterns down in the swamp.