Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/223

Rh above the door; our hands, as we have tried, can reach it; and a spring of no great agility will enable us to raise ourselves up to a footing on the pipe and the skirting-board. The climbing, then, is easy; and, what with the dense fog, and our own quickness, I think we shall have little difficulty in gaining the garden. The only precautions we need use are, to wait for a very dark morning, and to be sure that we are the last of the file, so that no one behind may give the alarm"

"Or attempt to follow our example, and spoil the pie by a superfluous plum!" added Augustus. "You counsel admirably; and one of these days, if you are not hung in the mean while, will, I venture to argue, be a great logician."

The next morning was clear and frosty; but the day after was, to use Tomlinson's simile, "as dark as if all the negroes of Africa had been stewed down into air." "You might have cut the fog with a knife," as the proverb says. Paul and Augustus could not even see how significantly each looked at the other.

It was a remarkable trait of the daring temperament of the former, that, young as he was, it