I looked again, and there he still was twirling round just as if he was being roasted, and the rope shaking so that I thought it must break. I kept whispering to him, but he did not hear me; and just dim and indistinctly as he was seen, I could make out that he was trying to double himself up and get his hands to the rope. I never, I'm sure, felt anything so dreadful before in my life as those few moments when he was struggling there, and me unable to help him; for, in addition to the horror, there was the pricking of my conscience, as it told me that this was all my fault, and that if he was killed I should have murdered him. Which was very dreadful, you know, when that last affair of the cistern, which he escaped from with a fearful drenching, ought to have been a warning to me to have spared him from running any more risks on my behalf. I declare that I should have tried to slide down the rope to help him, or else to share his fate, if Clara had not restrained me once more; but she kept tightly hold of my waist, till there came up a sound like the gnashing together of teeth, the rope gave a terrible shake, and the iron hooks fell jingling upon the floor. There was a crashing and rustling of leaves and branches, as if a heavy body had fallen amongst trees, and then all was still, except for a deep groan--a French groan--which came up, thrilling us all horribly; for the rope had come unfastened, and had slipped through the round rings of the hooks. We all stood aghast for a few minutes; but at last I summoned up courage enough to lean out, and whisper loudly-- "Achille! mon ami Achille!" when, as if in answer, came a most doleful "H-ooo, o-o-o, ho-o-o-o!" which made one's very blood run cold. "That's only an owl," said Clara, the next minute. "A howl!" said Patty; "that it wasn't, it was a groan, just the same as the pigs give when they're dying in our slaughter-house at home." I leaned out of the window as far as I could, once more, and was trying to pierce the darkness below, when all at once I heard a window to the right opening very gently, and squeaking as it ran up, and that window, I felt sure, was the lady principal's; so, recollecting the night of the alarm from Clara's basin--agonised though I was--I felt obliged to close ours quietly, pick up the two hooks, and then we all three glided back to our room--my heart chiding me the while for forsaking poor Achille in such a time of dire distress. But what could I do? To stay or to raise an alarm was to be found out, and perhaps--ay, perhaps!--poor fellow, he was not hurt, after all. It was just as well that we did slip back, for we had hardly closed the door before the alarm bell on the top of the house began to ring, and we heard the Fraulein spring out of bed with a regular bump upon the floor.