"What a mad adventure this is," he said; "and yet what a satisfaction it would have been to me, before I left England, to be able to feel that I had had my revenge upon that brat Tobias. That he had not altogether failed me after I had paid so much money to be rid of him. But that is over. I have failed in that attempt; but they shall not say it cost me my life. They will be bold people who stop me in my passage to the street in this house."
He felt the trap-door. It was fast.
"Humph!" he said, "doors are but bonds; and the rains of a few winters rot them quickly enough. We shall see."
The knife, with which he would have been well pleased to give poor Tobias his quietus, was thick and strong. He slid it under the wooden trap, and by mere force lifted it up. The nails of the bolt easily withdrew themselves from the rotten wood.
Todd was right. The rains of a few winters had done their work.
It was not exactly a time in the evening, when, in such a class of house, any one might be expected to be found in the attics; so Todd made no scruple of at once removing the lower trap in the ceiling.
He dropped comfortably enough on to the floor.
And now, coming suddenly as he did from the light, faint as it was, of the open air in the room, which he found himself, seemed to be involved in profound darkness; but that he knew would wear away in a few moments, and he stood still for his eyes to get accustomed to the semi-obscurity of the place.
Gradually, then, as though out of chaos, there loomed a bedstead and all the necessary appointments of a bed-room. It was untenanted; and so Todd, after listening intently, and believing, from the marked stillness that there prevailed, that the upper part of the house was deserted, walked to the door, and opening it, stood upon the landing.
"If I can now but step down stairs noiselessly, and open the street door, all will be well. People don't sit upon the staircase, and I may be fortunate enough to encounter no one."