A coarse hand stole towards his ankle; he took a
swift step and sprang desperately on to the next ledge--it was an old
manor house, and these ledges were nearly a foot broad--from this one he
bounded to the next, and then to a third, the last but one on this side
of the building. The corner ledge was but half the size, and offered no
safe footing: but close to it he saw the outside leaves of a tree. That
tree, then, must grow close to the corner; could he but get round to it
he might yet reach the ground whole. Urged by that terror of a madhouse
which is natural to a sane man, and in England is fed by occasional
disclosures, and the general suspicion they excite, he leaped on to a
piece of stone no bigger than one's hat, and then whirled himself round
into the tree, all eyes to see and claws to grasp.
It was a weeping ash: he could get hold of nothing but soft yielding
slivers, that went through his fingers, and so down with him like a
bulrush, and souse he went with his hands full of green leaves over head
and ears into the water of an enormous iron tank that fed the baths.
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