So startled was the boy by the adventure, so exhausted by what he had gone through, that it never occurred to him to make a dash for liberty. He crouched there, literally paralysed, and for the moment he could not believe it true that, due to his silence and position, he was unseen, and the man had passed away into the darkness, and his heavy panting breath had died away. In the reaction came the thought of what he ought to do, and with it the wonder that it had not occurred to him before. Pausing a few brief moments to make sure that he was quite alone, Godfrey rose from his crouching position, and, with the rope gliding through his hand, he stepped outward on to the lawn at right-angles to the front of the house, to feel the next minute the sharp needles of the big fir-tree brushing his face and making a crickling, crackling noise as the rope, which passed through his hands, rustled among the boughs. The next minute he had forced his way in close up to the trunk, and, running the rope through his hands, till he got hold of the free end, he fastened it round his waist and then began to climb. It would have been easy enough getting from bough to bough, which stood straight out, and was facile for one who mounted as if he were going up a ladder; but there was the rope, which kept catching and the noise it made as he had to shake and snatch to free it in its passage amongst the lower branches. But he persevered, and climbed and climbed with his task growing lighter, the branches thinner, and he found himself right up the grand old tree, which towered above the roof, leaving him now on a level with the window from which he had lowered himself. Godfrey paused, breathless, with one arm round a horizontal branch to rest himself a little and listen; but all was still, and, untying the rope from about his waist, he passed it round the tree, a comparatively easy task now, for, embracing the trunk, his hands touched, and directly after he was hauling upon the rope, had drawn it tight, so tight that it was pretty well horizontal, when, passing it round the trunk again, he knotted it firmly, forming a spider line ready for him to creep along to his sanctuary in the roof. It required a little nerve, but the lad was desperate, and, trusting to his knots at either end being firm, he took hold of the rope, let his feet glide down, and then began to travel hand over hand, swinging more and more till his feet ceased to touch the nearest, boughs, when, throwing them up, he hooked first one leg and then the other over the giving rope, and, relieving the weight upon his arms, began to creep more quickly over the ten or fifteen yards which separated the tree-trunk from the house. The rope, in spite of his efforts to tighten it, formed a deep bow as he went along, easily at first, but with the difficulty increasing as the depth of the curve was passed, and the latter part was somewhat of a climb.