As for Peter, he made off without my help; and here I was with the house to myself.
Then I knew I was in a scrape beside which all the troubles of the past few weeks were as nothing.

I had shamefully outraged the beadle of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, acting under the authority of his Grace the Bishop of London! Nothing I could say or do could undo that.
Even if I fled now--which I was not in the humour of doing, since my blood was up--it was too late.

For already a crowd was in the Strand, some led by curiosity and Peter's lamentations, others by Timothy's halloos; and before I knew where I stood, I was besieged.
I had barely time to bolt the door and heap up reams of paper across the passage, before such a battering began as you never heard.

I ran upstairs and surveyed the enemy from a window.

There were half the men of the Watch there--they wanted me for assaulting a beadle.