sentient, he caught his breath in sharp amazement.

"Great Heavens! Is it possible _I_ did that?" he cried aloud--and the
next moment, spurred by alert discretion, was scaling the fence with
the readiness of an alley-cat.

Instantaneously, as he poised above the abyss of Stygian blackness on
the other side, not a little daunted by its imperturbable mystery, a
quick backward glance showed him figures moving in the basement
hallway of the gambling house; and easing over, he dropped.

Hard flags received him with native impassivity: stumbling, he lost
balance and sat down with an emphasis that drove the breath from him
in one mighty "_Ooof!_"

There was a simultaneous confusion of new, strange voices on the other
side of the fence; cries of surprise, recognition, excitement:

"Feeny, by all that's holy!"

"Mike Grogan, or I'm a liar!"

"What hit the two av urn?"

"Gawd knows!"

"Thin 'tis this waay thim murdherous divvles is b'atin' ut!"

"Gimme a back up that fince!..."

P. Sybarite picked himself up with even more alacrity that if he'd
landed in a bed of nettles, tore across that terra-incognita, found a
second fence, and was beyond it in a twinkling.

Swift as he was, however, detection attended him--a voice roaring:
"There goes wan av thim now!"

Other voices chimed in spendthrift with suggestions and advice....

Blindly clearing fence after fence without even thinking to count
them, P. Sybarite hurtled onward. Noises in the rear indicated a
determined pursuit: once a voice whooped--"_Halt or I fire!_"--and a
shot, waking echoes, sped the fugitive's heels....

But in time he had of necessity to pause for breath, and pulled up in
the back-yard of a Forty-sixth Street residence, his duty--to find a
way to the street and a shift from that uniform of unhappy
inspiration--as plain as the problem it presented was obscure.

XI

BURGLARY UNDER ARMS

And there P. Sybarite stood, near the middle of a fence-enclosed area
of earth and flagstones; winded and weary; looking up and all around
him in distressed perplexity; in a stolen coat (to be honest about it)
and with six months' income from a million dollars unlawfully procured
and secreted upon his person; wanted for resisting arrest and
assaulting the minions of the law; hounded by a vengeful and
determined posse; unacquainted with his whereabouts, ignorant of any
way of escape from that hollow square, round whose sides window after
excitable w