the pipe, and slid safely to the ground.  One or two passers-by saw him drop lightly to the sidewalk, but thought nothing of it.  It was not the part of the jail in which prisoners were confined, and he might have been taken for a carpenter or plumber who chose that unusual way of coming from the roof.  His hat blew off in his descent, but he did not waste time in looking for it.  He walked slowly till he got to the corner, and then plunged through the dark and ill-smelling streets of the poor and crowded quarter, till he came by the open gate of a coal-yard.  Seeing he was not pursued he went in, concealed himself behind a pile of boards and lay there until it was quite dark.

He then came out and walked through roundabout ways, avoiding the gas-lights and the broad thoroughfares, to Dean Street.  He climbed the fence and crept through the garden to the back door of the house.  He had eaten nothing since early morning, and was beginning to be hungry.  He saw there were no lights in the rear of the house, and thought if he could enter the kitchen he might get a loaf of bread without alarming the household.  He tried the back door and found it fastened.  But knowing the ways of the house, he raised the cellar door, went down the steps, shut the door down upon himself, groped his way to the inner stairs, and so gained the kitchen.  He was walking to the cupboard when the door opened and he saw Maud coming toward him.

She did not seem in the least startled to see him there.  In the extremity of her terror, it may have seemed to her that he had been sent especially to her help.  She walked up to him, laid her hands on his shoulders and whispered, “Oh, Sam, I am so glad to see you.  Save me!  Don’t let him touch me!  He is in there.”

Sam hardly knew if this were real or not.  A wild fancy assailed him for an instant—­was he killed in jumping from the window?  Surely this could never happen to him on the earth; the girl who had always been so cold and proud to him was in his arms, her head on his shoulder, her warm breath on his cheek.  She was asking his help against some danger.

“All right, Mattie,” he whispered.  “Nobody shall hurt you.  Who is it?” He thought of no one but the police.

“Offitt,” she said.

He brushed her aside as if she had been a cobweb in his path, and with a wild cry of joy and vengeance he burst through the half-open door.  Offitt turned at the noise, and saw Sam coming, and knew that the end of his life was there.  His heart was like water within him.  He made a feeble effort at defence; but the carpenter, without a word, threw him on the floor, planted one knee on his chest, and with his bare hands made good the threat he uttered in his agony in the court-room, twisting and breaking his neck.

Sleeny rose, pulled the cover from the centre-table in the room, and threw it over the distorted face of the dead man.

Maud, driven out of her wits by the dreadful scene, had sunk in a rocking-chair, where, with her face in her hands, she was sobbing and moaning.  Sam tried to get her to listen to him.