I instantly dodged past him, and stood panting while he collected himself. His glasses, without which he was helpless, had flown off, and I saw his eyes, which before had seemed to fill the whole field of the great lenses, mere swollen slits, like a pig’s. He groped about in the utmost consternation as he knelt, pawing the tiles for his lost property. “Who are you? Wait! I’ll be with you,” he ejaculated excitedly, as his bony hands swept the roof. I backed out of their reach without replying. At last he found what he sought, and fitting the rims to his nose, rose to his feet and stared at me. “Hey, what!” he said--“a sweep! Well!”--and blew out a rumbling grunt, which he checked suddenly, as if he had turned a cock on it. A moment after, he put his hand into his pocket, and fetching out a dirty fragment of biscuit, held it to me persuasively, as one might lure a colt. Seeing, however, that I still held away from him, he threw the biscuit down in a pet, and stood to canvass me in a baleful manner. “What do you want?” he snapped out suddenly. “How did you find your way here?” Still with my eyes on him, I answered, in a husky whisper-- “Don’t you know? Up the closet chimney.” “Ay,” he said, dropping his own voice in tacit response to the warning in mine, “but not to sweep it?” “No,” I said; “to escape by it.” His hand went up to his glasses. He glared at me through their restored focus. Watchful of him, lest, before I could explain, he should silence me provisionally with some stunning blow, I ventured to approach him a little nearer. “There’s killing,” I whispered, “going on down there--a poor old man in a grey coat.” He started violently, and pulling his jaw down, uttered a sort of mechanical crow, and let it go again. “Grey!” he muttered. “It’s the steward, then. He didn’t give _me_ away, did he?” I shook my head dumbly. He was readjusting his glasses to meet the answer. “Ay,” he gulped, swallowing with relief, “poor Mackenzie! And to think that for all his loyalty he must burn!” I whispered, “Why must he?” “Because,” he said, “he wasn’t of the faith.” This uncouth creature was getting horrible to me. I suppose he read my repulsion in my face, for his own suddenly grew agitated and menacing. “Are you thinking of betraying me?” he said. I retreated before him, working my foolish young arms. “Keep away!” I cried; “I don’t even know who you are.” “O!” he said, and stopped, and was at his spectacles again. Then suddenly he held up his hand. “Hark!” he said. I listened. Far and faint below, through the hubbub of destruction came wafted at intervals the name of the chaplain--Pope--the cynosure of all this iconoclastic zeal. “Yes, it’s you they want,” I said. “And you,” he retorted fiercely, “are pointing the way, you little”-- “It’s a lie!” I cried vehemently. “I came up here to escape from them, like you.” He looked at me doubtfully. “You said you didn’t know who I was.”