It might be the wall through which he had crept. Of that he could not be sure, but yet he did not think it was. He began to follow the line of it, taking care to do so in the opposite direction to the dog whose barking was incessant. As he walked he rubbed his hands along the surface of the wall in the hope of finding a gate. 

 For a long time he groped through the darkness, but came upon nothing in the least resembling a gate. Again he grew desperate. He would have to wait there until daylight. But he simply dared not do that with the dog straining at his chain, seemingly, only a very few yards off. 

 Sick with cold and shaking in every limb he began to cry feebly. His knees were knocking, he was at the end of his wits. There was no way out of the garden, yet if he stayed in it the dog would kill him. Suddenly he decided upon the only possible course; he must climb the wall. Not knowing its height, or what there was beyond, or whether it was merely the wall of a house, he began to "shin" up it for all he was worth, grasping its rough surface as well as he could with his hands and his knees and his bare toes. There must be some kind of a top to it, and when the dog broke his chain, as every moment he threatened to do, he might not be able to reach him. 

 Wild and precarious struggling, in the course of which he was several times within an ace of toppling backwards into the garden, brought his numb fingers at last to a kind of coping. He had just strength enough to draw up his body on to the narrow ledge, only to find that he could not possibly remain on it. The top of the wall was sown thickly with broken glass. 

 He knew his hands and knees were cut, yet he could hardly feel anything. There was only one thing to do now; he must jump for it—one side or the other. He came to no deliberate decision; at that moment he was completely unbalanced in body and mind, but a voice inside him said suddenly: 

 "Chance it!" 

 Hands and knees instinctively gripping as hard as they could, he slipped over the other side. But it was impossible to keep a hold. He slipped and swayed and slipped again, and then he knew that he was falling ... falling ... falling through space into the unknown. 

 

 

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