It was perhaps in the
hope of finding something of this last description that M'Naughten's
comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly
disappointed. There was no picture. The frame surrounded, and the
curtain was designed to hide, an oblong aperture in the partition,
through which they looked forth into the dark corridor. A person
standing without could easily take a purse from under the pillow, or
even strangle a sleeper as he lay abed. M'Naughten and his comrade
stared at each other like Vasco's seamen, 'with a wild surmise'; and
then the latter, catching up the lamp, ran to the other frame and
roughly raised the curtain. There he stood, petrified; and
M'Naughten, who had followed, grasped him by the wrist in terror.
They could see into another room, larger in size than that which they
occupied, where three men sat crouching and silent in the dark. For
a second or so these five persons looked each other in the eyes, then
the curtain was dropped, and M'Naughten and his friend made but one
bolt of it out of the room and downstairs. The man in the white cap
said nothing as they passed him; and they were so pleased to be once
more in the open night that they gave up all notion of a bed, and
walked the streets of Boston till the morning.
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