In the fourth place, hard by the coach-house in which Doctor Dulcifer's neat gig was put up, there was a tool-shed, in which the gardener kept his short pruning-ladder.

In the fifth and last place, outside the stable in which Doctor Dulcifer's blood mare lived in luxurious solitude, was a dog-kennel with a large mastiff chained to it night and day.

If I could only rid myself of the dog--a gaunt, half-starved brute, made savage and mangy by perpetual confinement--I did not see any reason to despair of getting in undiscovered at one of the second-floor windows--provided I waited until a sufficiently late hour, and succeeded in scaling the garden wall at the back of the house.
Life without Alicia being not worth having, I determined to risk the thing that very night.
Going back at once to the town of Barkingham, I provided myself with a short bit of rope, a little bull's-eye lantern, a small screwdriver, and a nice bit of beef chemically adapted for the soothing of troublesome dogs.

I then dressed, disposed of these things neatly in my coat pockets, and went to the doctor's to dinner.

In one respect, Fortune favored my audacity.