ny moment we might be interrupted.
So the plan was no sooner conceived than carried out. The rope was
made fast to my left wrist. Then I mounted on Marie's shoulders, and
climbed--not without quavering--through the window, taking as little
time over it as possible, for a bell was already proclaiming midnight.

All this I had done on the spur of the moment. But outside, hanging by
my hands in the darkness, the strokes of the great bell in my ears, I
had a moment in which to think. The sense of the vibrating depth below
me, the airiness, the space and gloom around, frightened me. "Are you
ready?" muttered Marie, perhaps with a little impatience. He had not
a scrap of imagination, had Marie.

"No! wait a minute!" I blurted out, clinging to the sill, and taking
a last look at the bare room, and the two dark figures between me and
the light. "No!" I added, hurriedly. "Croisette--boys, I called you
cowards just now. I take it back! I did not mean it! That is all!" I
gasped. "Let go!"

A warm touch on my hand. Something like a sob.

The next moment I felt myself sliding down the face of the house, down
into the depth. The light shot up. My head turned giddily. I clung,
oh, how I clung to that rope! Half way down the thought struck me that
in case of accident those above might not be strong enough to pull me
up again. But it was too late to think of that, and in another second
my feet touched the beam. I breathed again. Softly, very gingerly, I
made good my footing on the slender bridge, and, disengaging the rope,
let it go. Then, not without another qualm, I sat down astride of the
beam, and whistled in token of success. Success so far!

It was a strange position, and I have often dreamed of it since. In the
darkness about me Paris lay to all seeming asleep. A veil, and not the
veil of night only, was stretched between it and me; between me, a mere
lad, and the strange secrets of a great city; stranger, grimmer, more
deadly that night than ever before or since. How many men were
watching under those dimly-seen roofs, with arms in their hands? How
many sat with murder at heart? How many were waking, who at dawn would
sleep for ever, or sleeping who would wake only at the knife's edge?
These things I could not know, any more than I could picture how many
boon-companions were parting at that instant, just risen from the dice,
one to go blindly--the other watching him--to his death? I could not
im