There was a very sad pause.  Despair was on the faces of the club.  A happy thought came to Charlie.  “Some one has got to sit up and wake the next one, and I will.  I can take a nap the next forenoon, you know.”

“Three cheers for Charlie!” called out Wort, and they were cordially given.  It was arranged on the spot that Charlie should sit up.  If Aunt Stanshy had been at home she would have vetoed the plan, but, purposing to be absent the night before the Fourth she had engaged Silas Junkins to stay with Charlie and guard the premises.  Charlie had no difficulty in obtaining Silas’s consent to the plan, and not only his consent, but also his co-operation.  In the main entry of Aunt Stanshy’s house was a tall, old-fashioned clock.  It was an aged household servant, and had done duty in the entry many years.  It always stood in one place, one particular corner in the rear of the entry.  It is a wonder its voice did not show any sign of collapse, as it had called off the hours so many years.  It would not have been strange if it had lost its patience.  But uncomplainingly, even cheerily and without any sign of weakness, it told you what time it was.  Charlie sometimes heard it in the night, and then it sounded like, “Cheer up! cheer up!” its pleasant voice halting on the “cheer,” and then emphasizing the “up.”  It divided all its peals into two such notes, and when Charlie heard it strike one o’clock the effect was quite enlivening as be lay there in his dark little chamber.  At an hour earlier, when it sounded twelve “Cheer ups,” what a joyous procession of notes that was!  It was like a watchman’s voice ringing out “All’s well!” twelve times.  It occurred to Charlie that he might occupy a chair in the entry, and, if at all inclined to go to sleep, the striking of the clock would keep him awake.  Silas Junking moved a table into the entry for Charlie, and set a lamp on it.  At nine Silas, who enjoyed very much a large quantity of sleep, went to his rest in a little bedroom on the same floor with the entry.

“You can step into my room and wake me, Charlie, if any thing happens.”

“O, I sha’n’t need to,” was the watchboy’s very emphatic reply.

“Well, good-night!”

“Good-night!”

“Now all I’ve got to do,” soliloquized Charlie, “is just to keep awake, and it is a great deal better than to go to sleep with a string tying your big toe to the bed-post.  Hark, there is some one firing off a gun!  Wont I wake ’em with a blow on my horn!” Here he saw himself, as he visited house after house, arousing boy after boy.  It would be like the falling of a row of bricks, where the only need is to push over the first one and the whole set will follow.  Every thing, though, depended on the fall of the first brick.  Would Charlie do his part?

“I’ll take this story-book about Indians, giants, and fairies,” he said, “into the entry, and that will keep me awake splendid.”

It was a book startling enough, and the trouble was that it was too startling.