Last spring we went to the country, house-hunting, leaving grandfather to guard our home.

He was waked, in the middle of the night as he supposed, by a noise, and started out to find where it came from.

It continued; so he courageously went downstairs and cautiously opened the kitchen door.

He reached out his skillet-trumpet before him through the partly opened door and the milkman poured in a quart of milk.
This story, I am told, is an ancient chestnut.

But I used to see the deaf grandfather with his uplifted skillet on the steps of Beecher's pulpit, and the young lady gave it as a real happening in her own home.