The House of the Wolf [22]
But there was no need for him to finish. I saw that Marie was standing at the far side of the room by the unglazed window; which, being in a sloping part of the roof, inclined slightly also. He had raised the shutter which closed it, and on his tip- toes--for the sill was almost his own height from the floor--was peering out. I looked sharply at Croisette. "Is there a gutter outside?" I whispered, beginning to tingle all over as the thought of escape for the first time occurred to me.
"No," he answered in the same tone. "But Marie says he can see a beam below, which he thinks we can reach."
I sprang up, promptly displaced Marie, and looked out. When my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom I discerned a dark chaos of roofs and gables stretching as far as I could see before me. Nearer, immediately under the window, yawned a chasm--a narrow street. Beyond this was a house rather lower than that in which we were, the top of its roof not quite reaching the level of my eyes.
"I see no beam," I said.
"Look below!" quoth Marie, stolidly,
I did so, and then saw that fifteen or sixteen feet below our window there was a narrow beam which ran from our house to the opposite one--for the support of both, as is common in towns. In the shadow near the far end of this--it was so directly under our window that I could only see the other end of it--I made out a casement, faintly illuminated from within.
I shook my head.
"We cannot get down to it," I said, measuring the distance to the beam and the depth below it, and shivering.
"Marie says we can, with a short rope," Croisette replied. His eyes were glistening with excitement.
"But we have no rope!" I retorted. I was dull--as usual. Marie made no answer. Surely he was the most stolid and silent of brothers. I turned to him. He was taking off his waistcoat and neckerchief.
"Good!" I cried. I began to see now. Off came our scarves and kerchiefs also, and fortunately they were of home make, long and strong. And Marie had a hank of four-ply yarn in his pocket as it turned out, and I had some stout new garters, and two or three yards of thin cord, which I had brought to mend the girths, if need should arise. In five minutes we had fastened them cunningly together.
"I am the lightest," said Croisette.
"But Marie has the steadiest head," I objected. We had learned that long ago--that Marie could walk the coping-stones of the battlements with as little concern as we paced a plank set on the ground.
"True," Croisette had to admit. "But he must come last, because whoever does so will have to let himself down."
I had not thought of that, and I nodded. It seemed that the lead was passing out of my hands and I might resign myself. Still one thing I would have. As Marie was to come last, I would go first. My weight would best test the rope. And accordingly it was so decided.
There was no time to be lost. At any moment we might be interrupted. So the plan was no sooner conceived than carried out. The rope was made fast to my left wrist. Then I mounted on Marie's shoulders, and climbed--not without quavering--through the window, taking as little time over it as possible, for a bell was already proclaiming midnight.
All this I had done on the spur of the moment. But outside, hanging by my hands in the darkness, the strokes of the great bell in my ears, I had a moment in which to think. The sense of the vibrating depth below me, the airiness, the space and gloom around, frightened me. "Are you ready?" muttered Marie, perhaps with a little impatience. He had not a scrap of imagination, had Marie.
"No! wait a minute!" I blurted out, clinging to the sill, and taking a last look at the bare room, and the two dark figures between me and the light. "No!" I added, hurriedly. "Croisette--boys, I called you cowards just now. I take it back! I did not mean it! That is all!" I gasped. "Let go!"
A warm touch on my hand. Something like a sob.
The next moment I felt myself sliding down the face of the house, down into the