But don't miss him, whatever you do, or we are worse off than before." "No," said Jack, "I shall aim very carefully.

I will wait till he is exactly underneath, and then, plob! It will get him on his topknot." The ivy was, of course, out of sight of the two sentries so long as they stayed at their posts; but, as anyone who knows Myddelton Hall, which is little altered since that time, will understand, a very trifling extension of his beat would bring one of them into a position to command the carriagedrive which Jack had to cross to get from the shrubbery to the house.

However, the boy sauntered off, looking as aimless as a piece of floating thistledown, and gained the house unperceived.

Directly he was past the soldiers' line of vision he became brisker, and in a few minutes the party in the shrubbery, who had by this time returned to their original post, and at the point in the bushes nearest to the sentries, saw him scrambling over the roof.
"If he were hurt," said the blacksmith, "the Colonel would never forgive me." "He's climbed that too often for danger of accidents," said Philip.
Jack was now crawling along a coping just over the farther sentry, and they watched him picking out the mortar from between two big stones with his knife.

In five minutes he had it loose, and, grasping it with both hands, he pushed it close to the edge, and then peeped over.