None of the officers had thought proper to interfere with mad Maud, for there was nothing to be got by running the chance of an ugly wound with the knife she carried, and the consequence was that she outstripped every one in the race to the Chequers, being the unconscious cause of giving an alarm of danger to Britton which he otherwise would not have received. He was still sitting with Bond, exulting over the success of his visit to Learmont’s, and regretting that, before he left, he had not gone to greater lengths in his wild spirit of mischief, when a scuffle at the door of the Chequers attracted his attention, and then he heard the voice of Maud—a voice he knew full well, shrieking in its loudest accents,—
“Andrew Britton! Andrew Britton! I have come to see you die! Savage Britton, come forth! Murderer, I have come to see you die.”
“Now, by all the foul fiends,” cried Britton, “I will be troubled by that croaking witch no more.”
He rose from his seat, and despite the remonstrances of Bond, rushed into the passage to execute summary vengeance upon poor Maud, when he was seized by one of the officers, who had been quicker than his fellows, and who cried,—
“Andrew Britton, you are my prisoner.”
For one instant Britton was passive, and then drawing a long breath, he seized the unlucky officer round the waist, and with one tremendous throw he pitched him through the open doorway into the street, where he fell with a deep groan, for a moment obstructing the passage of his comrades, and giving Britton time to dart up the staircase, which he did as quickly as his unwieldy bulk would let him. In another moment the voice of Sir Francis Hartleton—the only one he dreaded—rung in his ears as the magistrate cried—
“A hundred pounds for the apprehension of Andrew Britton! After him, men—after him! Follow me!”
Maud stood screaming with a wild unearthly glee in the passage, and clapping her hands while Sir Francis and his officers rushed up the narrow staircase of the Chequers. As for Bond, he just looked out at the parlour door; when he saw how affairs were proceeding, he went back, and drunk up all Britton’s liquor, after which lifting one of the low parlour windows, he stepped out, and walked leisurely down the street with his pipe in his mouth, as if nothing particular had happened, except that when he reached the corner he knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a post, and remarked,—
“That’s a smasher!”
Britton was not much intoxicated previous to the arrival of his enemies, and the shock of finding himself thus openly sought for by his worst, or at all events, his most dangerous foe, completely sobered him. “What has happened to Learmont?” was the question he asked of himself as he reached his attic and bolted the door, in order to gain a moment’s time for thought. It was but a moment, however, that he had to spare, and while the confusion and terror of his mind were each instant growing stronger, he opened the window and clambered out into the gutter, along which he crawled a few paces, and then commenced the ascent of the sloping roof of the old house, knowing that upon its other slope it abutted so closely upon some other houses, that in the darkness of the night he would have a chance to escape. For the first time, however, in his life, a mortal fear crept over Britton’s heart, and when a shout arose in the street from the maskers, some of whom saw his dark figure crawling up the roof, he was compelled to clutch desperately to it, to save himself from rolling down headlong.