oor; in front, through the window, an escape that would leave
him mangled and at the mercy of those who were coming to slay him.

Still peering out into the darkness--that was now not _all_
darkness--he saw about six feet to the left of him the mouth of the
perpendicular pipe into which the horizontal one emptied itself and
which must run down the side of the house. His chance, he thought, was
here. Yet if he would avail himself of it he must be quick; the day
would come ere long; at any moment those who had been summoned by the
landlord must be approaching; he would be discovered.

He fastened his sword to his back with his sash--he could not drag it
by his side--then head first he crept out of the window, testing with
his right hand the water pipe--for six feet he would have to rely upon
that to fend him from destruction, to prevent him from rolling off the
roof to death below on the cobblestones! With that right hand pressed
against it he could--if it did not give way under the pressure--reach
the spout of the upright pipe. As he tried it it seemed strong,
securely fastened to the lip of the roof; he might venture.

Face downward, his chest to the sloping roof, of which there was three
feet between the sill of the window and the pipe at the edge, he
lowered himself--his right hand on the pipe, his left, until obliged
to loose it, clinging to the window frame. And at last he was on the
roof itself, with the right hand still firmly pressed against that
pipe, and the top joints of his left-hand fingers, and even his nails,
dug into the rough edges of the tiles. That frail pipe and those tiles
were all there was now to save him--nothing else but them between him
and destruction! Slowly he thus propelled himself along, feeling every
inch of the pipe carefully ere he bore any weight on it, feeling also
each tile he touched to see if it was loose or tight. For he knew that
one slip--one detached tile, one inch of yielding of the pipe--and he
would go with a sudden rush over the sloping precipice to the stones
below. And as he dragged himself along, hearing the grating of his
body and the scraping of the buttons on his clothes against the roof,
he prayed that the man watching below might not hear them also. At
last he reached the mouth of the upright pipe, grasped it, and, as
before, pressed against it to discover if it was firm--as it proved to
be--then drew his body up over it, and gradually prepared to descend
by it, fe