"It shall be an unsolved mystery to them all. They shall puzzle
themselves bald-headed over it," he whispered.

Upstairs we stopped long enough to return the keys to Eb's desk.
Our friend still had his precious banjo under his arm. We had to
go cautiously in the dark, as we dared to light only one match,
and that we kept covered as well as we could. There was a window
at the rear of the building, and unlike the window in the corridor
below, it was not barred.

Mr. Daddles and I looked out. There were no lights to be seen, and
no people about. We raised the window very cautiously, an inch at
a time.

"Country police have their disadvantages," whispered Mr. Daddles,
"but they have this virtue: they go home at night, and let the
jail take care of itself. In the city, we should have had to pick
our way through the slumbering forms of innumerable cops."

We listened at the window. Bailey's Harbor, after its great
excitement over the captured burglars, had gone home, and gone to
sleep. Everything was quiet as a graveyard. We could hear the
slapping of the water against the timbers of the wharf, and
somewhere, a rooster, disturbed by the moonlight, crowed once. It
was a dim and sleepy sound, and it was not repeated. The fog had
nearly gone; the moon shone clear.

One by one, and as quiet as mice, we crawled through the window,
and dropped to the earth below.