But liberty was not yet:  there was still a fall of forty feet, and he must needs repass the wreckage of his own making to filch the blankets from his cell.  In terror lest he should awaken the Master-Side Debtors, he hastened back to the roof, lashed the coverlets together, and, as the city clocks clashed twelve, he dropped noiselessly upon the leads of a turner’s house, built against the prison’s outer wall.  Behind him Newgate was cut out a black mass against the sky; at his feet glimmered the garret window of the turner’s house, and behind the winking casement he could see the turner’s servant going to bed.  Through her chamber lay the road to glory and Clare Market, and breathlessly did Sheppard watch till the candle should be extinguished and the maid silenced in sleep.  In his anxiety he must tarry—­tarry; and for a weary hour he kicked his heels upon the leads, ambition still too uncertain for quietude.  Yet he could not but catch a solace from his splendid craft.  Said he to himself:  ’Am I not the most accomplished slip-string the world has known?  The broken wall of every round house in town attests my bravery.  Light-limbed though I be, have I not forced the impregnable Castle itself?  And my enemies—­are they not to-day writhing in distress ?  The head of Blueskin, that pitiful thief, quivers in the noose; and Jonathan Wild bleeds at the throat from the dregs of a coward’s courage.  What a triumph shall be mine when the Keeper finds the stronghold tenantless!’

Now, unnumbered were the affronts he had suffered from the Keeper’s impertinence, and he chuckled aloud at his own witty rejoinder.  Only two days since the Gaoler had caught him tampering with his irons.  ’Young man,’ he had said, ’I see what you have been doing, but the affair betwixt us stands thus:  It is your business to make your escape, and mine to take care you shall not.’  Jack had answered coolly enough:  ’Then let’s both mind our own business.’  And it was to some purpose that he had minded his.  The letter to his baffled guardian, already sketched in his mind, tickled him afresh, when suddenly he leaps to his feet and begins to force the garret window.

The turner’s maid was a heavy sleeper, and Sheppard crept from her garret to the twisted stair in peace.  Once, on a lower floor, his heart beat faster at the trumpetings of the turner’s nose, but he knew no check until he reached the street door.  The bolt was withdrawn in an instant, but the lock was turned, and the key nowhere to be found.  However, though the risk of disturbance was greater than in Newgate, the task was light enough:  and with an iron link from his fetter, and a rusty nail which had served him bravely, the box was wrenched off in a trice, and Sheppard stood unattended in the Old Bailey.  At first he was minded to make for his ancient haunts, or to conceal himself within the Liberty of Westminster; but the fetter-locks were still upon his legs, and he knew that detection would be easy as long as he was thus embarrassed.  Wherefore, weary and an-hungered, he turned his steps northward, and never rested until he had gained Finchley Common.