He stood on the chair, and as the room was low-slatted he found he could easily reach the windows in question.
He shook them, and found to his joy that it would be a comparatively easy thing to remove one of them.
"What fools they are," he muttered contemptuously. "Did they really expect to keep me here. They must think I am a green hand."
He removed the window, and by great effort succeeded in raising himself so that he might have a chance of drawing himself through the aperture. It did not prove so easy as he expected. He did, however, succeed at length, and drew a long breath of satisfaction as he found himself once more in the possession of his liberty.
"I'm a free man once more," he said. "What next?"
He would have been glad to return to the miser's house, and possessed himself of some of his gold, but the faint gray of dawn was already perceptible, and there was too much risk attending it. He felt that this must be deferred to a more fitting occasion.
A few days later the tramp found himself in the streets of New York.
For the time he had given up the pursuit of Tony. Indeed, he had wholly lost the clew. Moreover, prudence dictated his putting as great a distance as possible between himself and the village where he had been arrested.
The hundred miles intervening between New York and that place he had got over in his usual way, begging a meal at one house, and a night's lodging at another. He was never at a loss for a plausible story. At one place where he was evidently looked upon with suspicion, he said:
"I ain't used to beggin'. I'm a poor, hard-workin' man, but I've heard that my poor daughter is sick in New York, and she's in the hospital. Poor girl! I'm afraid she'll suffer."