I looked out twenty times in a minute into the dark corners of the passage, straining my eyes, holding my breath, anticipating the most unlikely events, the most impossible dangers.

Had they really gone, or were they still prowling about the house?
Oh, what a sum of money I would have given only to have known what they were about in that interval of silence! I was startled at last out of my suspense in the most awful manner.
A shout from one of them reached my ears on a sudden down the kitchen chimney.

It was so unexpected and so horrible in the stillness that I screamed for the first time since the attack on the house.

My worst forebodings had never suggested to me that the two villains might mount upon the roof.
"Let us in, you she-devil!" roared a voice down the chimney.
There was another pause.

The smoke from the wood fire, thin and light as it was in the red state of the embers at that moment, had evidently obliged the man to take his face from the mouth of the chimney.