that—such is the academic temper!—he had forgotten to catch hold of the other end of the line.
He heard the chair rattle loudly down the roof outside, he saw its long tail of knotted sheets swiftly drawn up through the broken skylight, he leapt up to clutch it just too late, and marked in despair the last of his bedclothes flashing up past and above him like a white snake, to disappear through the broken window from his gaze. Two seconds afterwards he heard the chair fall into the garden some fifty feet below, and he noted with some disgust that a quantity of broken glass had come down upon his food.
It was, as I have said, in the first grey light of the third day—the Thursday—that he had thus gratuitously shed his bedding. For some moments after that failure he sat down and despaired. He also felt his head where the chair had struck it.
As he turned round helplessly to discover whether some object might not suggest a further plan, he was astonished to see the great oaken door standing ajar. He pulled it open to its widest extent; the green baize door beyond swung to his touch, and he was a free man.
