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 272  took immediate advantage of his absence to prepare to ascend the tower, and having found a large knife in the knapsack she had salvaged she took it between her teeth and climbed the narrow winding staircase.

"If he comes back before I return, Lizzie," she said, "capture him, but don't shoot. It might make the rest suspicious."

She then disappeared and I heard her climbing the stairs with her usual agility. However, she returned considerably sooner than I had anticipated, and in a state of intense anger.

"There is another one up there," she whispered. "I heard him sneezing. Why he didn't shoot at me I don't know, unless he thought I was the other one. But I've fixed him," she added with a tinge of complacency. "It's a rope ladder at the top. I reached up as high as I could and cut it."

She then grew thoughtful and observed that cutting the ladder necessitated changing a part of her plan.

"What plan?" I demanded. "I guess my life's at stake as well as yours, Tish Carberry."

"I should think it would be perfectly clear," she said. "We've either got to take this town or starve like rats in that cellar. They've got so now that they won't even walk on the side next