The man on the roof must have heard the hissing of the fire as I put it out, and have felt the change produced in the air at the mouth of the chimney, for after the third stone had descended no more followed it.

As for either of the ruffians themselves dropping down by the same road along which the stones had come, that was not to be dreaded.

The chimney, as I well knew by our experience in cleaning it, was too narrow to give passage to any one above the size of a small boy.
I looked upward as that comforting reflection crossed my mind--I looked up, and saw, as plainly as I see the paper I am now writing on, the point of a knife coming through the inside of the roof just over my head.

Our cottage had no upper story, and our rooms had no ceilings.
Slowly and wickedly the knife wriggled its way through the dry inside thatch between the rafters.

It stopped for a while, and there came a sound of tearing.