storm had passed, and from all the houses that backed upon the one
in which they were prisoners lights blazed from every window, and
in each were crowded many people, and upon the roof-tops in
silhouette from the glare of the street lamps below, and in the
yards and clinging to the walls that separated them, were hundreds
of other dark, shadowy groups changing and swaying. And from them
rose the confused, inarticulate, terrifying murmur of a mob. It was
as though they were on a race-track at night facing a great
grandstand peopled with an army of ghosts. With the girl at his
side, Ford sprang to the window and threw up the blind, and as they
clung to the bars, peering into the night, the light in the room
fell full upon them. And in an instant from the windows opposite,
from the yards below, and from the house-tops came a savage,
exultant yell of welcome, a confusion of cries' orders, entreaties,
a great roar of warning. At the sound, Ford could feel the girl at
his side tremble.

"What does it mean?" she cried.

"Cuthbert has raised the neighborhood!" shouted Ford jubilantly.
"Or else"--he cried in sudden enlightenment-- "those shots we
heard."

The girl stopped him with a low cry of fear. She thrust her arms
between the bars and pointed. In the yard below them was the
sloping roof of the kitchen. It stretched from the house to the
wall of the back yard. Above the wall from the yard beyond rose a
ladder, and, face down upon the roof, awry and sprawling. were the
motionless forms of two men. Their shining capes and heavy helmets
proclaimed their calling.