A careful reconnoitre of the bridge entrance showed us that an alarm had been sent abroad, for a guard of police was waiting in the neighborhood to arrest suspicious characters. Had my original plan succeeded, we would have had none of this,--we would have been in the United States before the robbery was discovered. But that fact cut no figure in the present dilemma. To the American side we must get, and mighty soon, or we would find ourselves in a Canadian trap. The old suspension bridge, beyond doubt, was not a safe passage for us. It occurred to me that it might be worth while to examine the new bridge; perhaps we could pick our way across it. No one had made the attempt save a few workmen accustomed to that sort of climbing, as monkeys are used to gambolling in tree-tops. Verily workers on suspension bridges and the like, it seemed to me, were never quite at home unless they were dangling at the end of a wire many feet above water or _terra firma_. We approached the entrance cautiously, and, fortunately, were soon convinced that there wasn’t a police guard in that neighborhood. Undoubtedly they believed that no sane man would attempt to travel the new bridge under the most favorable weather conditions, and certainly not on such a night as we confronted it. But escape we must, and somehow I determined we would. With this feeling we began an investigation. The wind was howling, and at intervals filled almost to suffocation with clouds of powdery snow that fairly beat its way through our clothing. It had rained the day before, a freezing temperature following, and every inch of the bridge work was covered with a veneering of ice, much of it as smooth as glass, rendering foothold extremely uncertain. The night, or rather the morning, for it was going on four o’clock, was dark, there being no moon above the storm. What little light there was to pierce the darkness came from the snow. As for the bridge, the wind swept it clean, as well it might, for at times we kept our feet with great difficulty when a powerful gust came upon us unawares.