of leisure, whilst the rattling of the keys might obscure to the murderer
the creaking of the stairs under the re-ascending journeyman. His plan
was now formed: on regaining his bedroom, he placed the bed against
the door by way of a transient retardation to the enemy, that might give
him a short warning, and in the worst extremity, might give him a chance
for life by means of a desperate leap. This change made as quietly as
possible, he tore the sheets, pillow-cases, and blankets into broad
ribbons; and after plaiting them into ropes, spliced the different lengths
together. But at the very first he descries this ugly addition to his
labors. Where shall he look for any staple, hook, bar, or other fixture,
from which his rope, when twisted, may safely depend? Measured from the
window-_sill_--_i.e._, the lowest part of the window architrave--there
count but twenty-two or twenty-three feet to the ground. Of this length
ten or twelve feet may be looked upon as cancelled, because to that
extent he might drop without danger. So much being deducted, there would
remain, say, a dozen feet of rope to prepare. But, unhappily, there is no
stout iron fixture anywhere about his window. The nearest, indeed the sole
fixture of that sort, is not near to the window at all; it is a spike
fixed (for no reason at all that is apparent) in the bed-tester; now, the
bed being shifted, the spike is shifted; and its distance from the window,
having been always four feet, is now seven. Seven entire feet, therefore,
must be added to that which would have sufficed if measured from the
window. But courage! God, by the proverb of all nations in Christendom,
helps those that help themselves. This our young man thankfully
acknowledges; he reads already, in the very fact of any spike at all being
found where hitherto it has been useless, an earnest of providential aid.
Were it only for himself that he worked, he could not feel himself
meritoriously employed; but this is not so; in deep sincerity, he is now
agitated for the poor child, whom he knows and loves; every minute, he
feels, brings ruin nearer to _her_; and, as he passed her door, his