With a cry of alarm he sprang to his feet, seized the bag of coin and ran to the door of the study. In his haste he stumbled against it, and the dead-lock snapped to. He was a prisoner now, for he had left the skeleton-key in the inside of the outer door. Clutching his treasure, he ran to the main entrance; it was fast. He tried the smaller windows; iron bars were set across them. He made shift to wrap the surplice about his mouth, against the stifling smoke and fiery vapors. The bag dropped from his hand and the gold rolled about the floor. He stooped and clutched a handful of the coins and crammed them into his pocket. Was he to die after all like this, caught like a rat in a trap? In his panic of terror he forgot all necessity of concealment; he longed for nothing so much as discovery by those whose cries he now heard filling the waking street. Many voices were swelling the clamor there. Bells were pealing a terror-tongued alarm, but those on the spot saw that the structure was doomed. Hugh screamed desperately, but the roar of the flames overhead and the angry crackling of the woodwork drowned all else. The roof timbers were snapping, the muffling surplice was scorching, a thousand luminous points about him were bursting into fire in the sickening heat. He pounded with all his might upon the door panels, but in vain. Who outside could have imagined that a human being was pent within that fiery furnace? Uttering a hoarse cry, with the strength of despair, Hugh wrenched a pew from the floor and made of it a ladder to reach the rose-window. Mounting this, he beat frantically with his fist upon the painted glass. The crystal shivered beneath the blows, and clinging to the iron supports, his beard burnt to the skin, he set his face to the aperture and drew a gulping breath of the sweet, cold air. In his agony, with that fiery hell opening beneath him, he could see the massed people watching from the safety that was so near. "Look! Look!" The sudden cry went up, and a thrill of awe ran through the crowd. The glass Hugh had shattered had formed the face of the Penitent Thief in the window-design, and his outstretched arms fitted those of the figure. It was as though by some ghastly miracle the painted features had suddenly sprung into life, the haggard eyes opened in appeal. The watchers gasped in amazement. The flame was upon him now. He was going to his last account--with no time to alter the record. But had not his sleeping vow been one of reformation? He tried to shriek this to the deaf heavens, but all the spellbound watchers heard was the cry: "Lord, Lord, remember--" And this articulate prayer from the crucified malefactor filled them with a superstitious horror. In the crowd more than one covered his face with his hands. All at once there came a shout of warning. The wall opened outward, tottered and fell.