CHAPTER VII.
I ESCAPE FROM THE JEW'S HOUSE.
It was Mr.Rodriguez.

He lay face downward and slantwise across the front of the hearth, with arms spread, fingers hooked, and his neck protruding from the collar of his dingy dressing-gown like a plucked fowl's.

He had cast a slipper in falling, and the flesh of one heel showed through its rent stocking.

For a moment I supposed him in a fit; the next, I was recoiling towards the wall, away from a dark moist line which ran from under his left armpit and along the uneven boards to the far corner by the window, and there, under a disordered truckle-bed, spread itself in a pool.
With my eyes glued upon this horrid sight I slowly straightened myself up--having crouched back until I felt the wall behind me--and so grew aware of a door beside the chimney-breast, and that it stood ajar upon the empty landing.

The dead man's heels pointed towards it, his head towards the window at the foot of the bed.
And still my shaken wits could not clutch at the meaning of what I saw.