his hold; so that I wrenched myself loose, and gave him a straight,
heavy, right-hand hit in the nose, sending him reeling against the old
chest that came over in the Mayflower, which saved him from a fall.

At one and the same moment, both the thieves drew knives and made at me
together, and I, springing backwards, seized from the wooden rack of
weapons the first which my hand reached. It was a musket. Instinctively,
for there was no time to reason, I cocked, presented in a sort of
charge-bayonet attitude, the only one possible, and pulled trigger. The
old weapon went off with a deafening report, sending out a blinding
sheet of flame in the darkness. One thief fell headlong at my very feet;
the other, turning, fled blindly towards the staircase. I ought to have
caught him; but, in the unreflecting anger of the moment, coming up with
him at the stair-head, I struck at him with such good will and good
effect, that he fell down stairs faster than I cared to chase him in
the dark. Scrambling up at the bottom, he hurried out by the way he had
come, and fled; while I returned to my prisoner.

He was quite dead. The charge, a bullet, had passed in just above the
region of the heart, killing him instantly. I searched him, but found
only a knife, a little money, and some tobacco; nothing which could
identify him. He was well-made, middle-aged, and of a thoroughly vile
and repulsive countenance.

The necessary legal formalities were gone through as quickly and quietly
as possible, and the entrances by which the burglars had come in well
secured. They had evidently reconnoitred within and without the building
during the day, and selected a back way into the cellar, through which
they found no trouble in ascending to the Library.