Now, for the first time, I was able to move, to rise from my chair, to consider of how I should escape. If I betrayed by the smallest noise, that the attempt to suffocate me had failed, I was certain to be murdered. Had I made any noise already? I listened intently, looking toward the door. No! no footsteps in the passage outside; no sound of a tread, light or heavy, in the room above--absolute silence every where. Besides locking and bolting my door, I had moved an old wooden chest against it, which I had found under the bed. To remove this chest (my blood ran cold, as I thought what its contents _might_ be!) without making some disturbance, was impossible; and, moreover, to think of escaping through the house, now barred-up for the night, was sheer insanity. Only one chance was left me--the window. I stole to it on tiptoe. My bedroom was on the first floor, above an _entresol_, and looked into the back street, which you had sketched in your view. I raised my hand to open the window, knowing that on that action hung, by the merest hair's-breadth, my chance of safety. They keep vigilant watch in a House of Murder--if any part of the frame cracked, if the hinge creaked, I was, perhaps, a lost man! It must have occupied me at least five minutes, reckoning by time--five _hours_, reckoning by suspense--to open that window. I succeeded in doing it silently, in doing it with all the dexterity of a house-breaker; and then looked down into the street. To leap the distance beneath me, would be almost certain destruction! Next, I looked round at the sides of the house. Down the left side, ran the thick water-pipe which you have drawn--it passed close by the outer edge of the window. The moment I saw the pipe, I knew I was saved; my breath came and went freely for the first time since I had seen the canopy of the bed moving down upon me!