se of him on his feet--seemed sobered rather than
stunned by the crack on that head of his. We heard his fine voice no
more, but we could feel him straining every thew against the trap-door
upon which Raffles and I stood side by side. At least I thought
Raffles was standing, until he asked me to strike a light, when I found
him on his knees instead of on his feet, busy screwing down the
trap-door with his gimlet. He carried three or four gimlets for
wedging doors, and he drove them all in to the handle, while I pulled
at the stanchion and pushed with my feet.

But the upward pressure ceased before our efforts. We heard the ladder
creak again under a ponderous and slow descent; and we stood upright in
the dim flicker of a candle-end that I had lit and left burning on the
floor. Raffles glanced at the four small windows in turn and then at
me. "Is there any way out at all?" he whispered, as no other being
would or could have whispered to the man who had led him into such a
trap. "We've no rope-ladder, you know."

"Thanks to me," I groaned. "The whole thing's my fault?

"Nonsense, Bunny; there was no other way to run. But what about these
windows?"

His magnanimity took me by the throat; without a word I led him to the
one window looking inward upon sloping slates and level leads. Often as
a boy I had clambered over them, for the fearful fun of risking life
and limb, or the fascination of peering through the great square
skylight, down the well of the house into the hall below. There were,
however, several smaller skylights, for the benefit of the top floor,
through any one of which I thought we might have made a dash. But at a
glance I saw we were too late: one of these skylights became a
brilliant square before our eyes; opened, and admitted a flushed face
on flaming shoulders.

"I'll give them a fright!" said Raffles through his teeth. In an
instant he had plucked out his revolver, smashed the window with its
butt, and the slates with a bullet not a yard from the protruding head.
And that, I believe, was the only shot that Raffles ever fired in his
whole career as a midnight marauder.

"You didn't hit him?" I gasped, as the head disappeared, and we heard a
crash in the corridor.

"Of course I didn't, Bunny," he replied, backing into the tower; "but
no one will believe I didn't mean to, and it'll stick on ten years if
we're caught. That's nothing, if it gives us an extra five minutes
now, while the