ow 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. I remembered whole
days that I had spent, whole books that I had read, here in this
favorite fastness of my boyhood. The dirty little place, with the
dormer window in each of its four sloping sides, became a gallery
hung with poignant pictures of the past. And here was I leaving it
with my life in my hands and my pockets full of stolen jewels! A
superstition seized me. Suppose the conductor came down with me ...
suppose I slipped ... and was picked up dead, with the proceeds of my
shameful crime upon me, under the very windows

... where the sun
Came peeping in at dawn....

I hardly remember what I did or left undone. I only know that nothing
broke, that somehow I kept my hold, and that in the end the wire ran
red-hot through my palms so that both were torn and bleeding when I
stood panting beside Raffles in the flower-beds. There was no time for
thinking then. Already there was a fresh commotion in-doors; the tidal
wave of excitement which had swept all before it to the upper regions
was subsiding in as swift a rush down-stairs; and I raced after
Raffles al