And he told me one day that when his back was very bad, and he got the fidgets and could not keep still, he used to fix his eyes on "Peace," which had gold round the letters, and shone, and that if he could keep steadily to it, for a good bit, he always fell asleep at the last.

But he was very fanciful, poor chap! I do not think it was because Jem and I had any real wish to become burglars that we made a raid on the walnuts that autumn.

I do not even think that we cared very much about the walnuts themselves.
But when it is understood that the raid was to be a raid by night, or rather in those very early hours of the morning which real burglars are said almost to prefer; that it was necessary to provide ourselves with thick sticks; that we should have to force the hedge and climb the trees; that the said trees grew directly under the owner's bedroom window, which made the chances of detection hazardously great; and that walnut juice (as I have mentioned before) is of a peculiarly unaccommodating nature, since it will neither disguise you at the time nor wash off afterwards--it will be obvious that the dangers and delights of the adventure were sufficient to blunt, for the moment, our sense of the fact that we were deliberately going a-thieving.
"Shall we wear black masks ?" said Jem.
On the whole I said "No," for I did not know where we should get them, nor, if we did, how we should keep them on.
"If she has a blunderbuss, and fires," said I, "you must duck your head, remember; but if she springs the rattle we must cut and run." "Will her blunderbuss be loaded, do you think ?" asked Jem.

"Mother says the one in _their_ room isn't; she told me so on Saturday.

But she says we're never to touch it, all the same, for you never can be sure about things of that sort going off.