and the turns were short. On the fourth floor he fell headlong over a
bucket with a broom sticking in it, and cursed whoever left it there.
There was a ladder leading from the sixth floor to the roof, and he
ran up this and drew it after him as he fell forward out of the wooden
trap that opened on the flat tin roof like a companion-way of a ship.
The chimneys would have hidden him, but there was a policeman's helmet
coming up from another companion-way, and he saw that the Italians
hanging out of the windows of the other tenements were pointing at him
and showing him to the officer. So he hung by his hands and dropped
back again. It was not much of a fall, but it jarred him, and the race
he had already run had nearly taken his breath from him. For Rags did
not live a life calculated to fit young men for sudden trials of
speed.

He stumbled back down the narrow stairs, and, with a vivid
recollection of the bucket he had already fallen upon, felt his way
cautiously with his hands and with one foot stuck out in front of him.
If he had been in his own bailiwick, he would have rather enjoyed the
tense excitement of the chase than otherwise, for there he was at home
and knew all the cross-cuts and where to find each broken paling in
the roof-fences, and all the traps in the roofs. But here he was
running in a maze, and what looked like a safe passage-way might throw
him head on into the outstretched arms of the officers.

And while he felt his way his mind was terribly acute to the fact that
as yet no door on any of the landings had been thrown open to him,
either curiously or hospitably as offering a place of refuge. He did
not want to be taken, but in spite of this he was quite cool, and so,
when he heard quick, heavy footsteps beating up the stairs, he stopped
himself suddenly by placing one hand on the side of the wall and the