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If he thought to escape that way his hope was desperate The depth to

the water-level was not, he judged, twelve feet But Peridol had told

the truth Below lay not water, but a smooth surface of viscid slime,

here luminous with the florescence of rottenness, there furrowed by a

tiny runnel of ishly crept across it to the slow

stream beyond This quicksand, vile and treacherous, lapped the wall

below the , and s But, leaning far out, he saw that it ended at the angle of

the building, at a point twenty feet or so to the right of his position

He sprang to the floor again, and listened an instant; then, with guarded

movements--for there was fear in the air, fear in the silent rooht be made, the door burst in--he set the lanthorn

and wine-pitcher on the floor, and took up the table in his aran to carry it to the , but, halfway thither, his eye told hi, and he set it down again and

glided to the bed Again he was thwarted; the bed was screwed to the

floor Another n of

dis, he spread his cloak on the

floor, and deftly, with as little noise and rustling as ht be, be

piled the straw in it, coger, bound all together with them In three steps he was in