tained?"

"I think," said she in a low tone the underlying suffering of which
it would be hard to describe, "that it was not to seek me they first
invaded your house. They had heard you were a rich man, and the sight
of that ladder running up the side of the new extension was too much for
them. Indeed I know that it was for purposes of robbery they came, for
they had hired this room opposite you some days previous to making the
attempt. You see they were almost destitute of money and though they had
some buried in the cellar of the old house in Vermont, they dared not
leave the city to procure it. My brother was obliged to do so later,
however. It was a surprise to them seeing me in your house. They had
reached the roof of the extension and were just lifting up the corner of
the shade I had dropped across the open window--I always open my window
a few minutes before preparing to retire--when I rose from the chair in
which I had been brooding, and turned up the gas. I was combing my hair
at the time and so of course they recognized me. Instantly they gave
a secret signal I, alas, remembered only too well, and crouching back,
bade me put out the light that they might enter with safety. I was at
first too much startled to realize the consequences of my action, and
with some vague idea that they had discovered my retreat and come for
purposes of advice or assistance, I did what they bid. Immediately they
threw back the shade and came in, their huge figures looming frightfully
in the faint light made by a distant gas lamp in the street below.
'What do you want?' were my first words uttered in a voice I scarcely
recognized for my own; 'why do you steal on me like this in the night
and through an open window fifty feet from the ground? Aren't you afraid
you will be discovered and sent back to the prison from which you have
escaped?' Their reply sent a chill through my blood and awoke me to a
realization of what I had done in thus allowing two escaped convicts
to enter a house not my own. 'We want money and we're not afraid of
anything now you are here.' And without heeding my exclamation of
horror, they coolly told me that they would wait where they were till
the household was asleep, when they would expect me to show them the way
to the silver closet or what was better, the safe or wherever it was Mr.
Blake kept his money. I saw they took me for a servant, as indeed I was,
and for some minutes I managed to preserve that positi