s protected, like all the other windows in the cottage, by iron
bars. I listened in dreadful suspense for the sound of filing, but
nothing of the sort was audible. They had evidently reckoned on
frightening me easily into letting them in, and had come unprovided with
house-breaking tools of any kind. A fresh burst of oaths informed me
that they had recognized the obstacle of the iron bars. I listened
breathlessly for some warning of what they were going to do next, but
their voices seemed to die away in the distance. They were retreating
from the window. Were they also retreating from the house altogether?
Had they given up the idea of effecting an entrance in despair?

A long silence followed--a silence which tried my courage even more
severely than the tumult of their first attack on the cottage.

Dreadful suspicions now beset me of their being able to accomplish by
treachery what they had failed to effect by force. Well as I knew the
cottage, I began to doubt whether there might not be ways of cunningly
and silently entering it against which I was not provided. The ticking
of the clock annoyed me; the crackling of the fire startled me. I looked
out twenty times in a minute into the dark corners of the passage,
straining my eyes, holding my breath, anticipating the most unlikely
events, the most impossible dangers. Had they really gone, or were they
still prowling about the house? Oh, what a sum of money I would have
given only to have known what they were about in that interval of
silence!

I was startled at last out of my suspense in the most awful manner.
A shout from one of them reached my ears on a sudden down the kitchen
chimney. It was so unexpected and so horrible in the stillness that
I screamed for the first time since the attack on the house. My worst
forebodings had never suggested to me that the two villains might mount
upon the roof.

"Let us in, you she-devil!" roared a voice down the chimney.

There was another pause. The smoke from the wood fire, thin and light
as it was in the red state of the embers at that moment, had evidently
obliged the man to take his face from the mouth of the chimney. I
counted the seconds while he was, as I conjectured, getting his breath
again. In less than half a minute there came another shout:

"Let us in, or we'll burn the place down over your head!"

Burn it? Burn what? There was nothing easily combustible but the thatch
on the roof; and that had been well soake