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His life was still in danger; the increasing volumes of smoke warned him that in a few minutes the uppermost storey might be in flames. He took off his overcoat to allow himself more freedom of action; the manuscript, now an encumbrance, must precede him over the chimney-stack, and there was only one way of effecting that.
They had hardly gone to bed when a gale started to rage as though it would carry the house along with it. The bed-stead quivered, and the chimney-stack rattled as if there were goblins in it. "Mother, some one's knocking outside!" "Quiet, Fritzy; that's the loose board on the gable being shaken by the wind." "No; mother, it's at the door." "It does not lock; the latch is broken.
The white jalousies seem always closed, the grass on the lawns seems never cut, and the whole establishments have a pathetically deserted appearance to the passer-by. A feature of this part of the country can scarcely be believed without actually using one's eyes. It is the wooden chimney-stack, covered with oak shingles, that surmounts the roofs of most of the cottages.
Being but Beppo the sweep, he shall be free of my mystery the moment he's free of my chimney-stack." He could await Angioletto's coming now with equal mind. The lad had approved himself. I leave you to judge of the welcome he got when, breathless, scratched, and sable as the night, he showed his white teeth at the door. Beppo, in fact, fell weeping on his neck.
You'll have to come over the chimneys; wait till I get a ladder. 'And a rope, shouted Biffen. The man disappeared for five minutes. To Biffen it seemed half an hour; he felt, or imagined he felt, the slates getting hot beneath him, and the smoke was again catching his breath. But at length there was a shout from the top of the chimney-stack.
Upon the unexpected arrival of the police at Grafton Street this man had clambered through a skylight in the roof, crawled along the roofs of several houses, and there remained hidden until nightfall, when he had escaped down a "thieves' ladder," which is made of silk rope and so contrived that upon the thief's reaching the ground he can detach it from the chimney-stack to which it has been fastened.
It had a substantial and shapely chimney-stack. I liked the look that it had of honest solidity all over, nothing anywhere scamped in the workmanship of it. It looked as though it had been built for all time. But this was not so. For it was built on sand, and of sand; and the tide was coming in. Here and there in its vicinity stood other buildings. None of these possessed any points of interest.
The issue that she would decide to spare the offender for yet another year was in truth determined; for already William Skin had planted one ladder against the house-wall and had shuffled off to the barn for another, to be hoisted on to the slope of the thatch, and there belayed with a rope around the chimney-stack.
Among them all there was but one of two floors, a substantial red-brick little house with a most grandiloquent chimney-stack. And very rightly it was so, for it belonged to the Court chimney-sweep. On this eventful noon Sor Beppo, the sweep, was sitting on his doorstep in the sun, eating an onion, one of many which reposed in a vinegar bath on his knees.
"The leather case has been found, I am pleased to be able to tell you, Lord Stanway, since you left." "Empty, of course?" "Unfortunately, yes. It had evidently been thrown away by the thief behind a chimney-stack a roof or two away, where the police have found it. But it is a clue, of course." "Ah, then this gentleman will give me his opinion of it," Lord Stanway said, turning to Hewitt.
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