"There's your bed," says Moses Hunt, who had Rudolph by the arm, pointing to a rude cot in the corner.
"I'm dead tired," he said, and closed his eyes.
"He'll be quiet enough. We can leave him alone," said Hunt.
The door was locked, and Rudolph was left alone.
When five minutes had elapsed--time enough for his captors to get away--he rose in bed, and looked about him.
Beside the bed in which he was lying there was no other furniture in the room than a wooden chair.
"I must get away from this if I can," thought the tramp, "and before morning. I am glad they didn't put on handcuffs. Let me see, how shall I manage it."
It was a basement room, lighted only by windows three feet wide and a foot high in the upper part of the room.
"I should like to set fire to the building, and burn it up," thought the tramp. "That would cost them something. But it wouldn't be safe. Like as not I would be burnt up myself, or, at any rate, be taken again in getting away. No, no; that won't do."
"I wonder if I can get through one of those windows?" was the next thought that came into his mind.
He stood on the chair, and as the room was low-slatted he found he could easily reach the windows in question.
He shook them, and found to his joy that it would be a comparatively easy thing to remove one of them.
"What fools they are," he muttered contemptuously. "Did they really expect to keep me here. They must think I am a green hand."
He removed the window, and by great effort succeeded in raising himself so that he might have a chance of drawing himself through the aperture. It did not prove so easy as he expected. He did, however, succeed at length, and drew a long breath of satisfaction as he found himself once more in the possession of his liberty.
"I'm a free man once more," he said. "What next?"
He would have been glad to return to the miser's house, and possessed himself of some of his gold, but the faint gray of dawn was already perceptible, and there was too much risk attending it. He felt that this must be deferred to a more fitting occasion.
A few days later the tramp found himself in the streets of New York.
For the time he had given up the pursuit of Tony. Indeed, he had wholly lost the clew. Moreover, prudence dictated his putting as great a distance as possible between himself and the village where he had been arrested.