through all his veins at the thought.  This roused him from his lethargy and made him observant and alert.  He began to complain of his handcuffs; they were in truth galling his wrists.  It was not difficult for him to twist his hands so as to start the blood in one or two places.  He showed these quietly to the policemen, who sat with him in a small anteroom leading to the portion of the city jail, where he was to be confined for the night.  He seemed so peaceable and quiet that they took off the irons, saying good-naturedly, “I guess we can handle you.”  They were detained in this room for some time waiting for the warden of the jail to come and receive their prisoner.  There were two windows, both giving view of a narrow street, where it was not bright at noonday, and began to grow dark at sunset with the shade of the high houses and the thick smoke of the quarter.  The windows were open, as the room was in the third story, and was therefore considered absolutely safe.  Sleeny got up several times and walked first to one window and then to another, casting quick but searching glances at the street and the walls.  He saw that some five feet from one of the windows a tin pipe ran along the wall to the ground.  The chances were ten to one that any one risking the leap would be dashed to pieces on the pavement below.  But Sleeny could not get that pipe out of his head.  “I might as well take my chance” he said to himself.  “It would be no worse to die that way than to be hanged.”  He grew afraid to trust himself in sight of the window and the pipe:  it exercised so strong a fascination upon him.  He sat down with his back to the light and leaned his head on his hands.  But he could think of nothing but his leap for liberty.  He felt in fancy his hands and knees clasping that slender ladder of safety; he began to think what he would do when he struck the sidewalk, if no bones were broken.  First, he would bide from pursuit, if possible.  Then he would go to Dean Street and get a last look at Maud, if he could; then his business would be to find Offitt.  “If I find him,” he thought, “I’ll give them something to try me for.”  But finally he dismissed the matter from his mind,—­for this reason.  He remembered seeing a friend, the year before, fall from a scaffolding and break his leg.  The broken bone pierced through the leg of his trousers.  This thought daunted him more than death on the gallows.

The door opened, and three or four policemen came in, each leading a man by the collar, the ordinary riffraff of the street, charged with petty offences.  One was very drunk and abusive.  He attracted the attention of everybody in the room by his antics.  He insisted on dancing a breakdown which he called the “Essence of Jeems’ River”; and in the scuffle which followed, first one and then the other policeman in charge of Sleeny became involved.  Sleeny was standing with his back to the window, quite alone.  The temptation was too much for him.  He leaped upon the sill, gave one mighty spring, caught