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From a letter by Conan Doyle in July 1881:

"I had a bit of an escape last night. I had been dining with another cousin 4 miles off, (I find I am related to  half the county) and we sat rather late over our wine. By the time I got back the place was shut up and everybody had gone to bed, thinking I had been put up for the night. I slouched round the building not liking to knock them up, and at last--you know the habits of the beast--I shinnied up a waterpipe, found a window unfastened, and after some fumbling opened it, and tumbled in. I received a rapturous reception from Dick, whose room it was--rather too rapturous for he sprang at me with a double barreled gun in his hand, and would have put a charge of No. 12 through my head in another moment if I hadn't mildly pointed out the inhospitality of such an action."