So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to
bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name. People,
going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all
over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed
at Mr. Jefferson's the night before; and would describe how they had
heard the victim's shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the
murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of
the corpse.
So they let him practise in the day-time, in the back-kitchen with all
the doors shut; but his more successful passages could generally be heard
in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and would affect his
mother almost to tears.
She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been swallowed by
a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea - where the
connection came in, she could not explain).
Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom of the garden,
about quarter of a mile from the house, and made him take the machine
down there when he wanted to work it; and sometimes a visitor would come
to the house who knew nothing of the matter, and they would forget to
tell him all about it, and caution him, and he would go out for a stroll
round the garden and suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes,
without being prepared for it, or knowing what it was.
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