But I had realised it all while he stuck fast. Desperate in my heart-sickness, I made a hurried step to pass him; and instantly he moved backwards, and filled the doorway into the little front parlour by way of which I had hoped to escape into the forest. “Let me pass,” I cried wildly. “I want air.” He pointed to the copper. “Not safe. That way.” “I can’t,” I cried. “It was there I picked this up: you know it was.” Then I quite lost my reason. “You are a murderer!” I shrieked. “You are all murderers here! You rob and kill, and drag the poor bodies through and hide them in the cellar behind the door. Let me pass--I can’t live here--I can bear it no longer!” I raved and cried; I beat helplessly on that huge drum of flesh. It stood stolid, insensible, completely stopping the aperture. “Go--ask cap’en,” was all it said. I fell back from him on the word. The sense of an immediate necessity of self-control was flashed upon my consciousness. Above or below--either way my passage was guarded. I was between the devil and the deep sea; and, in an irrepressible burst of frenzy, I had confessed myself, let slip my tortured demon, and so, perhaps, spoken my own death-sentence. The terror of the thought drove out the lesser loathing. I must temporise--finesse. “Yes,” I said, “I will. I will not rest now till I know.” The return by that foul sewer, the fearful issue by the closed door, were experiences as horrible as any in my life. What crawling thread might not be still drawing from the obscure reservoir beyond? What hideous witness not fastening silent to me in the darkness, that it might rise with my rising and shriek to the light for vengeance? But I forced myself, in my mortal fear, to tread softly, and on very panic tiptoe climbed from the hateful pit, and crossed the room above. I paused a moment, on my shuddering way, for assurance of _his_ steady breathing; and then with cold deft hands set the ladder in place, and mounted it, and, drawing it after me into the thicket, fled along the passage. I had no thought of what I should do. I only wanted to escape: to put as long a distance as possible between myself and that spectre, confessed in all its blood-guiltiness at last. Half blinded, torn by flint and briar, I broke at length through the farther thicket, and sank, trembling and exhausted, upon the bank of the gravel-pit beyond. I had sat there I know not how long, my face in my hands, the alarum in my heart deafening me to all outward sounds--the storming trees above; the cold sabre of the wind slashing into the bushes of my refuge, as if it would lay me bare--when suddenly I felt the clinch of a hand on my shoulder, and screamed, and looked up. Three fellows, in a common livery, had descended softly upon me from above, and I was captured without an effort. I rose, staggering, to my feet, my face like ashes, my poor hands clasped in entreaty. But not a word could I force from my white lips.