d
absolutely safe. Sleeny got up several times and walked first to one
window and then to another, casting quick but searching glances at the
street and the walls. He saw that some five feet from one of the
windows a tin pipe ran along the wall to the ground. The chances were
ten to one that any one risking the leap would be dashed to pieces on
the pavement below. But Sleeny could not get that pipe out of his head.
"I might as well take my chance" he said to himself. "It would be no
worse to die that way than to be hanged." He grew afraid to trust
himself in sight of the window and the pipe: it exercised so strong a
fascination upon him. He sat down with his back to the light and leaned
his head on his hands. But he could think of nothing but his leap for
liberty. He felt in fancy his hands and knees clasping that slender
ladder of safety; he began to think what he would do when he struck the
sidewalk, if no bones were broken. First, he would bide from pursuit,
if possible. Then he would go to Dean Street and get a last look at
Maud, if he could; then his business would be to find Offitt. "If I
find him," he thought, "I'll give them something to try me for." But
finally he dismissed the matter from his mind,--for this reason. He
remembered seeing a friend, the year before, fall from a scaffolding
and break his leg. The broken bone pierced through the leg of his
trousers. This thought daunted him more than death on the gallows.

The door opened, and three or four policemen came in, each leading a
man by the collar, the ordinary riffraff of the street, charged with
petty offences. One was very drunk and abusive. He attracted the
attention of everybody in the room by his antics. He insisted on
dancing a breakdown which he called the "Essence of Jeems' River"; and
in the scuffle which followed, first one and then the other policeman
in charge of Sleeny became involved. Sleeny was standing with his back
to the window, quite alone. The temptation was too much for him. He
leaped upon the sill, gave one mighty spring, caught the pipe, and slid
safely to the ground. One or two passers-by saw him drop lightly to the
sidewalk, but thought nothing of it. It was not the part of the jail in
which prisoners were confined, and he might have been taken for a
carpenter or plumber who chose that unusual way of coming from the
roof. His hat blew off in his descent, but he did not waste time in
looking for it. He walked slowly till he got t