They had reached the roof of the extension and were just lifting up the corner of the shade I had dropped across the open window--I always open my window a few minutes before preparing to retire--when I rose from the chair in which I had been brooding, and turned up the gas.

I was combing my hair at the time and so of course they recognized me.

Instantly they gave a secret signal I, alas, remembered only too well, and crouching back, bade me put out the light that they might enter with safety.

I was at first too much startled to realize the consequences of my action, and with some vague idea that they had discovered my retreat and come for purposes of advice or assistance, I did what they bid.

Immediately they threw back the shade and came in, their huge figures looming frightfully in the faint light made by a distant gas lamp in the street below.
'What do you want ?' were my first words uttered in a voice I scarcely recognized for my own; 'why do you steal on me like this in the night and through an open window fifty feet from the ground?
Aren't you afraid you will be discovered and sent back to the prison from which you have escaped ?' Their reply sent a chill through my blood and awoke me to a realization of what I had done in thus allowing two escaped convicts to enter a house not my own.