“Spare me—spare me!”
The man took a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened it with his teeth.
“I’ll go—I’ll go,” cried Gray. “Put up the knife—oh, God! Put up the knife—any death but that!”
“Oh! Any death but that. Then it’s my opinion you’ve used such a little article yourself. Speak!”
“I—I—have,” gasped Gray. “Take it out of my sight, I cannot bear to look upon it.”
“Oh, you’re a tender-hearted piece of goods, certainly. Well, well, we all have our little failings. You’ve had a precious fright about this jump, and now I tell you it’s no jump at all.”
“Indeed?”
“No. These houses are so built that each story as they go up projects outwards, so that I’m cursed if you couldn’t shake a fist with a pal from some of the opposite attic windows. Come on, now, spooney, and you’ll curse yourself for a fool for being afraid of nothing.”
“Is it indeed as you say,” muttered Gray, who still could not get over his great terror, although he well knew that hundreds of houses in narrow thoroughfares in London were so situated, that the attics had scarcely a couple of yards of open space between them.
“Come on,” was the only reply, accompanied by a jerk of the rope, and presently one of the roofs ceased upon one side, and turning an angle, Gray, by the very dim light that was cast upwards from the street, saw that he was opposite a row of dirty, squalid-looking attic windows, from some of which lights were streaming, while others were obscured by old clothes hung up in the inside. A very few steps further now brought them to a part where, as the housebreaker had told Gray, the upper story of the house on the top of which they were, projected considerably across the narrow court; here Gray’s guide paused, and pointing to an attic immediately opposite, he said,—