When the hero of this unauthorized reconnoissance wheeled about to commence his retreat, his feet incontinently slipped up upon the inclined surface of the doors, and he came down heavily upon the rotten boards.

This, in itself, would have been but an inconsiderable disaster, and he might still have withdrawn from the inconvenient locality, if circumstances had not conspired against him, as circumstances sometimes will, when they ought to be conciliatory and accommodating.

The force with which Tom fell upon the decayed boards was too much for them, and the unlucky adventurer became another victim to the treachery of rotten wood, which has hurled so many thousands from time into eternity.
But Tom was not hurled so far as that on the present occasion, though for all practical purposes, for the succeeding half hour, he might as well have been a hundred fathoms under water, or beneath the wreck of a twenty-ton locomotive at the bottom of the river.

That cellar door was a bad place to fall through, which may be accounted for on the supposition that it was not made to fall through.

In his downward progress, Tom had unluckily struck his head against the side of the house; and when he landed at the bottom of the stairs, he was utterly oblivious to all distinctions between treason and loyalty.