WHITE LOTUS He was swarming up, quiet as a thief, when his fingers clawed the bare plaster.

The ladder hung from the square end of a protruding beam, above which there were no more rungs.

He hung in doubt.
Then, to his great relief, something blacker than the starlight gathered into form over his head,--a slanting bulk, which gradually took on a familiar meaning.

He chuckled, reached for it, and fingering the rough edge to avoid loose tiles, hauled himself up to a foothold on the beam, and so, flinging out his arms and hooking one knee, scrambled over and lay on a ribbed and mossy surface, under the friendly stars.

The outcast and his strange brethren had played fair: this was the long roof, and close ahead rose the wall of some higher building, an upright blackness from which escaped two bits of light,--a right angle of hairbreadth lines, and below this a brighter patch, small and ragged.