" This from another,
whose English was poor, and in whom I fancied I heard the
Dane. It was clear enough that be spoke sense, and a
sort of doubt fell on the whole crew; but speaker No. 1,
with a heavy crowbar he had, smashed into my pine wall,
as I have a right to call it now, with a force which made
the splinters fly.
"I should think we were all at Niblo's," said a man
of slighter build, "and that we were playing Humpty
Dumpty. Because a girl flew out of a window, you think
a fence opened to take her in. Why should she not go
through a door? and he kicked with his foot upon the
heavy sloping cellar-door of the church, which just rose
a little from the pavement. It was the doorway which
they used there when they took in their supply of coal.
The moon fell full on one side of it. To my surprise it
was loose and gave way.
"Here is where the girl flew to, and here is
where Bully Bigg, the donkey, let her slip out of
his fingers. I knew he was a fool, but I did not know he
was such a fool," said the Dane (if he were the Dane).
I will not pretend to write down the oaths and foul
words which came in between every two of the words I have
repeated.
"Fool yourself!" replied the Bully; "and what sort of
a fool is the man who comes up a blind alley looking
after a girl that will not kiss him when he bids her?"
"Anyway," put in another of the crew, who had just
now lifted the heavy cellar-door, "other people may find
it handy to hop down here when the `beaks' are too near
them.
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