"You looked to be besieged! Why you, booby, there is the shoot of your kitchen midden, twenty feet above the roof of old Fretis' store! And open, I will be sworn! Do you think that I should have come this way while there was a ladder in Caylus! Did you take the wolf for a sheep ?" With that he turned on his heel, swaggering away in the full enjoyment of his triumph.

For a triumph it was.

We stood stunned; ashamed to look one another in the face.

Of course the shoot was open.

We remembered now that it was, and we were so sorely mortified by his knowledge and our folly, that I failed in my courtesy, and did not see him to the gate, as I should have done.