ing'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 they 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 wind