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199 “In the King’s name,” cried voices without; and the hoarse cry rose again, but louder. boy. “I tell you they’ll never open it. Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door.” | Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower window-shutters as he ceased to speak,—and a loud huzza burst from the crowd—giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of its immense extent. “Open the door of some place where I can lock this sereeching hell-babe,” cried Sikes fiercely, running to and fro, and dragging the boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. § That door. Quick.” He flung him in, bolted it and turned the key. “Is the down-stairs door fast !" “ Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with the other two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered. “ The panels, are they strong ?” c Lined with sheet-iron.” “ And the windows too ?”’ (c Yes, and the windows.” “Damn you,” cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd, “do your worst; I’ll cheat you yet!" Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could exceed the cry of that infuriated throng—some shouted to those who were nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to the officers to shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such fury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle and bursting through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried beneath the window in a voice that rose above all others, “ Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder.” The nearest voices took up the cry, and a hundred echoed it. Some called for ladders, some for sledgehammers; some ran with torches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those below ; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind, and joined from time to time in one loud, furious roar. *“ The tide !”’ cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room and shut the faces out. “The tide was in asl came up. Give me a rope, a long rope. I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders and kill myself at last.” The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up to the housetop. ‘All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and that was too small even for the passage of his body. But from this aperture he had never ceased to call on those without to guard the back, and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the house-top, by the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the fact to those in front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in one unbroken stream. He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose, so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty to open it from the inside, and creeping over the tiles, looked over the low parapet. The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud. The crowd had been hushed during these few moments, watching his motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they perceived it and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumphant execration, to which all their previous shoutings had been whispers. Again and again it rose ; those who were at too ave a distance to know its meaning, took up the sound; it echoed and re-echoed ; it seemed as though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him, On pre the people from the front —on, on, on, in one strong strugglin current of angry faces, with here an there a glaring torch to light them up and show them out in all their wrath and passion. The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the mob; sashes were thrown up or torn bodily out; there were tiers and tiers of faces in every window, and cluster upon cluster of people clinging to every house-top. Each little bridge (and there were three in sight) bent beneath the weight of the crowd upon it, and still the current pour ed on to find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an instant see the wretch,
