He gripped with both hands the corner of it which projected into the window, opposite the corner which rested on the mattress within the cell, and let himself down till his feet caught on the grating of the window below, slipping his hands alternately along the edges of the blanket, and so down step by step, feeling for the bars with his feet. When his feet reached the stone sill below he felt the top bars under his hands. He stopped to catch the lower bars in order to lower himself to the ground, and his face came opposite the upper half of a partly dropped window. The lower half of it was curtained. A gas jet burned inside. The room was like the cell overhead, whitewashed, but larger and furnished with ordinary bedroom furniture. The gas jet was fixed in the same place as in his own cell. The light fell flickering across the wide bed. A man lay there asleep on his back, his thick beard thrust up and in the air, his feet toward the window, where Allen clung like a spider. The sleeper was Sweeney. Allen slipped to the ground, sat down, and covered his face with his hands, and shivered. He had not known that Sweeney slept underneath him. He pulled on his shoes, stood up, and went out under the maple tree to the sidewalk. He was glad he had not known that Sweeney slept underneath him. The sky was nearly covered by clouds, a few sparkling spaces here and there. The blanket hung from the dismantled upper window, and flapped in the night wind against the wall. As he climbed the bank to the sidewalk the clock in the church tower across the street struck three. It frightened him. It seemed too spectacular a place to be in, there under the great arc light that poured its glare down upon him, while the bells above the light were pealing, shouting in their high tower, clamouring alarm over the Court House Square, over the little old jail, the grim, small, dingy jail, low down in the sunken land, jail of the one ungrated window and flapping blanket, jail of the sleeping Sweeney. He hurried along the sidewalk toward Maple Street. At the corner of the square was a drug store with gas jets flaring behind two glass globes--one red, the other blue--the two dragonish eyes of the monstrous long shape of the block looming behind and over them. All the blocks around seemed unnaturally huge. They crowded close to the street, and stared down at him with their ghastly blank windows--nervous, startled fronts of buildings that shivered and echoed to the sound of his steps. There were no other sounds now but a small whispering wind, and his own steps and their pursuing echoes. The red and blue globes in the corner drug store glared intolerably. As he passed they began suddenly to flow and whirl all over their glassy slopes.