notes. In a few hours the change was great.
The quiet student, with no aspirations but the completion of his
wandering-year in Italian picture-galleries, had become a fugitive from
justice, and on the hands, groping in a lugubrious earthen alley, were
the stains of a fellow-creature's blood. Then, too, the singular
friendships he had formed, the old Jew and his daughter, who were
awaiting him--and this still more remarkable creature who had glanced
across his path, like the divinities from above in antique poems, to
point out the safe retreat.

But too long a time elapsed without his finding such an evidence of his
security as he had too confidently expected. He might have mistaken the
true line, for while at any point of divergence there were marks in the
earth, where traces of saline flows still glistened, and even stones and
bits of stick placed in cavities in the manner of the gypsy clues
familiar to social outcasts, he could not interpret them; for once, his
university education proved faulty.

A new alarm arose from the presence of swarms of rats; larger and more
hideous than their fellows of which one catches a fleeting view in
houses and in the streets, they seemed to be less afraid of the lord of
creation than fables teach. They scuttled off in front of him, it is
true, but he began to think that they followed him when he went by. One
ray of comfort came in the two beliefs that his flashing matches
frightened them, and that, for certain portions of the way,
well-regulated droves of the vermin had districts assigned them; those
that ventured in chase of him too far were beaten back by those on whose
grounds they rashly trespassed.

This latter consolation was lost almost at the same time as the other:
his stock of fuses ran out, while with the last flash he feared that he
saw a larger mass than ever before in his track. The rats had united to
overwhelm him.

Seized with panic, spite of his philosophy, dropping the all but empty
wax-light case in his haste, he dashed madly forward, groping to save
his head and shoulders from contact with the capacious gallery sides,
but unable to take a step with any certainty how it would end.
Fortunately, he had strayed back into an often-traveled path, and while
the scamper of the rats died away at the close of his frantic race, he
heard a sound but little above his level revealing the presence of man.
It was not a cheerful sound; being the tolling of a bell such as is
sw