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'Es night-watchman of the church, sir. 'E maikes me tired a-sittin' out all night on them steps and lookin' at you insultin' like. I'd a punched 'is 'ed, sir beg pardon, sir " "Go on, Thomas." "One night a comin' 'ome with Arry, the other English boy, I sees 'im a sittin' there on them steps.
There are said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syree dâk-bungalow on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of a very lively Thing; a White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are Officers' Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs; Peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something not fever wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad.
The night-watchman chuckled as he watched the head shrouded in the golf-cape hood bend a moment over the little white square. "Maybe it's one o' the maids, maybe it's one o' the teachers, maybe it's one o' the girls," he confided to his lantern; "they're all alike, come to that! An' a good thing, too!"
All I could do I done, and 'e was ringing the gate-bell that night from five minutes to twelve till ha'-past afore I heard it. Many a night-watchman gets a name for going to sleep when 'e's only getting a bit of 'is own back. "We stood there talking for over 'arf-an-hour arter I 'ad let'im in. Leastways, he did.
From the verses he cited his judgment seemed perfectly justified, and even if he was wrong, it is interesting to note that this poor sailor and night-watchman was ready to rise up and criticise an eminent dignitary and scholar on rather delicate points of versification and the finer distinctions between old words of Gaelic.
"Beg your pardon, sir," said the night-watchman hoarsely, when they reached the bottom of the difficult staircase, "there's been a young woman here asking for a gentleman of the name of Crichton. I told her there weren't no one of that name here, and Mr. Bullen, sir, he saw her, and sent her away. I thought I had better mention it to you, sir." "Crichton? Crichton?" repeated Rainham indifferently.
"Then a sober husband, a sober wife, and a girl at work and they are still at it for I got the man a job as night-watchman in the custom-house, at Father Cruse's request." Felix started forward. "You surely don't mean Father Cruse of St. Barnabas's?" he exclaimed eagerly. "Exactly." "Was it he who burst in that door?"
The night-watchman sat brooding darkly over life and its troubles. A shooting corn on the little toe of his left foot, and a touch of liver, due, he was convinced, to the unlawful cellar work of the landlord of the Queen's Head, had induced in him a vein of profound depression.
"Dogs on board ship is a nuisance," said the night-watchman, gazing fiercely at the vociferous mongrel that had chased him from the deck of the Henry William; "the skipper asks me to keep an eye on the ship, and then leaves a thing like that down in the cabin." He leaned against a pile of empty casks to recover his breath, shook his fist at the dog, and said, slowly
"Do you take me for a landlady?" she asked. "Only when you take me for a night-watchman," said Quin. They eyed each other steadily for a moment, then she held out her hand. "We'll compromise," she said. "No salary and no board. We'll try it out for a week."
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