letter, and the explosion of the early morning, fitted together like
parts in some obscure and mischievous imbroglio. Evil was certainly
afoot; evil, secrecy, terror, and falsehood were the conditions and the
passions of the people among whom he had begun to move, like a blind
puppet; and he who began as a puppet, his experience told him, was often
doomed to perish as a victim.

From the stupor of deep thought into which he had glided with the letter
in his hand, he was awakened by the clatter of the bell. He glanced from
the window; and conceive his horror and surprise when he beheld,
clustered on the steps, in the front garden and on the pavement of the
street, a formidable posse of police! He started to the full possession
of his powers and courage. Escape, and escape at any cost, was the one
idea that possessed him. Swiftly and silently he redescended the
creaking stairs; he was already in the passage when a second and more
imperious summons from the door awoke the echoes of the empty house; nor
had the bell ceased to jangle before he had bestridden the window-sill
of the parlour and was lowering himself into the garden. His coat was
hooked upon the iron flower-basket; for a moment he hung dependent heels
and head below; and then, with the noise of rending cloth and followed
by several pots, he dropped upon the sod. Once more the bell was rung,
and now with furious and repeated peals. The desperate Challoner turned
his eyes on every side. They fell upon the ladder, and he ran to it, and
with strenuous but unavailing effort sought to raise it from the ground.
Suddenly the weight, which was thus resisting his whole strength, began
to lighten in his hands; the ladder, like a thing of life, reared its
bulk from off the sod; and Challoner, leaping back with a cry of almost
superstitious terror, beheld the whole structure mount, foot by foot,
against the face of the retaining-wall. At the same time, two heads were
dimly visible above the parapet, and he was hailed by a guarded whistle.
Something in its modulation recalled, like an echo, the whistle of the
man with the chin-beard.

Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by those very
miscreants, whose messenger and gull he had become? Was this, indeed, a
means of safety, or but the starting-point of further complication and
disaster? He paused not to reflect. Scarce was the ladder reared to its
full length than he had sprung already on the rounds; hand