peace, undisturbed by the harsh creaking of the sagging floor beneath
its double burden. I put the fur cap on the grotesque, nodding dead
head, and, pushing a chair toward the wall with my foot, mounted it and
managed with a great effort to squeeze through the hole, pulling up the
body with me as I did so.

Then I felt with my foot for the little platform at the top of the iron
stairs outside, found it, and dropped. Afterward I dragged the
dreadful burden down from the hole.

I had not known that I was strong before, and I do not understand now
how I managed to accomplish my wretched task.

I carried the dead man all the way down the fire-escape, clinging and
straining against the rotting, rusting bars, which bent and cracked
beneath my weight and seemed about to break and drag down the entire
structure from the wall.

I hardly paused at the platforms outside the successive stories. The
weather was growing very cold, a storm was coming up, and the wind
soughed and whined dismally around the eaves.

I reached the bottom at last and rested for a moment.

At the back of the house was a little vacant space, filled with heaps
of débris from the demolished portions of the building and with refuse
which had been dumped there by tenants who had left and had never been
removed. This yard was separated only by a rotting fence with a single
wooden rail from a small blind alley.