Fétis looked down into the yard, which was not more than fourteen feet below him. There was a water-butt in an angle made by the wall of the house and that of the yard, and there was a wooden pipe fixed in a slanting position to carry the rain from the gutters above to the butt below. This pipe passed within a few feet of the window, and Fétis, even at sixty-six years of age, and with a fever upon him, felt agile enough to descend by it to the edge of the water-butt and thence drop into the yard. It was a descent which a schoolboy might have made half a dozen times a day for sport. He buttoned his coat across his chest, clapped his hat firmly over his brow, and clambered out of the window, cautiously, slowly, seating himself upon the timber pipe, and letting himself gradually down the incline, hugging the wall as he went. His slim fleshless figure and light weight served him well; he dropped from the edge of the water-butt on to the stone pavement as lightly as a rabbit; and then he had no more to do but to find an egress from the yard, which might prove impossible, and so all his work wasted. He groped about him in the darkness till he discovered a narrow passage which went under a house at the back of Marjory's, and opened into an alley. There was an iron gate which was generally locked; but fortune favoured the fugitive. One of Marjory's slipshod daughters had gone on an errand to the dram-shop in the alley, and had left the gate ajar. In another moment Fétis was beyond the precincts. He ran along the narrow court as fast as his thin legs could carry him, hearing voices and laughter in the dram-shop as he sped past its open door. A turn of the alley brought him into Fleet Street, and in his blind rush for freedom he nearly went head over heels over one of the posts that guarded the footway. Late as the hour was, the business of life was not over. A train of heavy wagons and tired cattle choked the road; a ballad-singer was shrilling a political ballad in front of a public-house, while a roar of festal noises testified to the carousal within. A street-fight blocked the rough pavement between Chancery Lane and St. Dunstan's, much to the discomfiture of an alderman, who was being carried westward after a City dinner, in a chair guarded by a couple of linkmen. Fétis changed his pace from a run to a walk, hurried along, threading his way safely amidst all obstacles, scarce conscious of fatigue in that hypernatural condition of his mind and body. Yet he had sense enough to know that his strength might fail him at any moment, and was on the look-out for a coach or chair. He saw a coach standing just inside Temple Bar, hailed the driver, who was half-asleep on his box, and jumped in. "Soho Square," he said, "the corner of Greek Street."