y hold a council of war. Is that a working flag-staff
overhead?"

"It used to be."

"Then there'll be halliards."

"They were as thin as clothes-lines.".

"And they're sure to be rotten, and we should be seen cutting them
down. No, Bunny, that won't do. Wait a bit. Is there a lightning
conductor?"

"There was."

I opened one of the side windows and reached out as far as I could.

"You'll be seen from that skylight!" cried Raffles in a warning
undertone.

"No, I won't. I can't see it myself. But here's the
lightning-conductor, where it always was."

"How thick," asked Raffles, as I drew in and rejoined him.

"Rather thicker than a lead-pencil."

"They sometimes bear you," said Raffles, slipping on a pair of white
kid gloves, and stuffing his handkerchief into the palm of one. "The
difficulty is to keep a grip; but I've been up and down them before
to-night. And it's our only chance. I'll go first, Bunny: you watch
me, and do exactly as I do if I get down all right."

"But if you don't?"

"If I don't," whispered Raffles, as he wormed through the window feet
foremost, "I'm afraid you'll have to face the music where you are, and
I shall have the best of it down in Acheron!"

And he slid out of reach without another word, leaving me to shudder
alike at his levity and his peril; nor could I follow him very far by
the wan light of the April stars; but I saw his forearms resting a
moment in the spout that ran around the tower, between bricks and
slates, on the level of the floor; and I had another dim glimpse of him
lower still, on the eaves over the very room that we had ransacked.
Thence the conductor ran straight to earth in an angle of the facade.
And since it had borne him thus far without mishap, I felt that Raffles
was as good as down. But I had neither his muscles nor his nerves, and
my head swam as I mounted to the window and prepared to creep out
backward in my turn.

So it was that at the last moment I had my first unobstructed view of
the little old tower of other days. Raffles was out of the way; the
bit of candle was still burning on the floor, and in its dim light the
familiar haunt was cruelly like itself of innocent memory. A lesser
ladder still ascended to a tinier trap-door in the apex of the tower;
the fixed seats looked to me to be wearing their old, old coat of
grained varnish; nay the varnish had its ancient smell, and the very
vanes outside creaked their message to my ears.