eling with his feet for the continuance of it below.

But, to his horror, there was no such continuance! His legs, hanging
down from his groin over the roof--while his body was supported on the
wide mouth of the pipe and by his hands being dug into the sides of
the tiles, where they were joined to each other--touched nothing but
the bare space of the wall. There was no pipe! It was broken off short
a foot below the horizontal one, and the wall, he could feel, was damp
from the water which had escaped and flowed down from where it was so
broken.

He was doomed now, he knew; which doom should he select--to fall below
and be crushed and mangled, or return to the room and, refusing to
come out, be either done to death or taken prisoner? As he pondered
thus in agony, away down the street he heard voices breaking on the
morning air, he heard the clank of loosely fastened sabres on the
stones--they were coming to take him--to, as Andre had said, "cut him
down." And, scarce knowing what he did, or why in his frenzy he
decided thus, he let his body further down into space, and, with his
hands grasping the pipe's mouth, swung over that space. And once, ere
he let go, which he must do in another moment, for the sides of the
spout were cutting into his palms, he twisted his head and glanced
down beneath him.

Then as he did so he gave a gasp--almost a cry of relief unspeakable.
Beneath him, not two yards below his dangling feet, was the stone roof
of the porch or doorway of the inn. The fall to that could not break
his legs surely!--he prayed God the sound of it might not disturb the
man within, who must be on the alert.

Closing his feet so that both should alight as nearly as possible on
the same spot, pressing his body as near to the wall as he could, he
let go the spout and dropped.

CHAPTER XXVII.

ANOTHER ESCAPE.

He alighted in the exact middle of the porch roof and fell with his
ankles against the foot-high raised parapet. Then he paused a moment
ere deciding what he should do next.

The sound of voices and clanking sabres were coming nearer--also it
would soon now be light. And he wondered that he heard no noise from
the man watching within; wondered that he was not staring about for
those who were coming; almost wondered that he was not standing at the
door with it open, ready to go out and meet them.

One thing St. Georges recognised as necessary to be done at once,
viz., to quit the roof of the porch