d anticipated communicating with the men in this boat by
certain signals and tokens which had been arranged between us. But the
lack of windows in the room had made all such arrangements futile, so I
knew as little of their actions as they of my sufferings; all of which
did not tend to add to the cheerfulness of my position.

"I, however, held out for a half-hour, listening, waiting and watching
in a darkness which, like that of Egypt, could be felt, and when the
suspense grew intolerable I struck a match and let its blue flame
flicker for a moment over the face of my watch. But the matches soon
gave out and with them my patience, if not my courage, and I determined
to end the suspense by knocking at the door beneath.

"This resolution taken, I pulled open the door before me and stepped
out. Though I could see nothing, I remembered the narrow landing at the
top of the stairs, and, stretching out my arms, I felt for the boarding
on either hand, guilding myself by it, and began to descend, when
something rising, as it were, out of the cavernous darkness before me
made me halt and draw back in mingled dread and horror.

"But the impression, strong as it was, was only momentary, and, resolved
to be done with the matter, I precipitated myself downward, when
suddenly, at about the middle of the staircase, my feet slipped and I
slid forward, plunging and reaching out with hands whose frenzied grasp
found nothing to cling to, down a steep inclined plane--or what to my
bewildered senses appeared such,--till I struck a yielding surface and
passed with one sickening plunge into the icy waters of the river which
in another moment had closed dark and benumbing above my head.

"It was all so rapid I did not think of uttering a cry. But happily for
me the splash I made told the story, and I was rescued before I could
sink a second time.

"It was a full half hour before I had sufficiently recovered from the
shock to relate my story. But when once I had made it known, you can
imagine the gusto with which the police prepared to enter the house
and confound the obliging host with a sight of my dripping garments and
accusing face. And indeed in all my professional experience I have never
beheld a more sudden merging of the bully into a coward than was to be
seen in this slick villain's face, when I was suddenly pulled from the
crowd and placed before him, with the old man's wig gone from my head,
and the tag of blue ribbon still clingi