“I will make no noise. They’ll not hear us.”
The girl took the light, and crept softly downstairs. Peace followed.
The back door was soon unfastened, and the burglar imprinted a kiss on the hand of his benefactress.
“You can jump over the wall at the end of the garden, and reach the court at the back,” she whispered. “Now go.”
She closed the door and refastened it; then she betook herself to the window of the back parlour, and saw her strange visitor jump over the wall into a neighbour’s garden. He then climbed another wall, and gained a side street beyond.
“Oh, gracious goodness! how glad I am he’s got off. What an extraordinary man!” she ejaculated.
“Poor soul, he seemed in the depths of trouble, I shall learn something more about the affair in the morning, I’ll dare be sworn.”
She crept softly up the stairs and reached her own room without disturbing any of the other inmates of the house.
Meanwhile the police officers had obtained the ladder from the adjoining yard; this they reared against the side of one of the houses which was in close proximity to the warehouse from which Peace had so successfully escaped.
The constables ascended the ladder, clambered over the roofs of the houses, but as the reader may readily imagine, they were in no may successful in obtaining sight of the fugitive, who by this time was far away from the scene of action.