No Use For Ladders

"Ladders, when you find them handy," said the retired burglar, "may seem like a very convenient way of getting into open secoud story windows, but after two experiences that I had with them I gave them up and stuck to the old fashioned way of doois and cellar windows. "In a suburban town that I visited once I found 'em painting a Queen Anne house in the rainbow stylo that they nsed to paiuthouses in, and that, I suppose, they paint 'em in' stil] to soine extent. The men had ladders up, no stage, and I noticed that at the close of the day one of them was painting near a window, and I woudered if he'd leave nis ladder there when he etopped work at night. I sauntered around that1 way after dark, and there it was, and it wan summer, and the window was wide open. Most folks in the country, when their hotfses are being painted, are apt to be a little skittish about the ladders, and if one should be left like this one they'd be pretty sure to close the window near it and lock it, but these folks didn't appear to be disturbed, and as far as my getting into the house was concerned it was just about as easy for me to walk up that ladder and step off through the window as it would have been to walk in at the front door witb' it unlocked. "Later, about 2 o'clock the nest morniug, I went up that ladder and in at the window without the slightest trouble, and there was nobody sleeping iu that room. It was all just as easy as it could be. I poked around the house and gathered up what stuff there was worth carrying off and went back to that room and the open window and down thfi ladder and off. "A month af ter that, as I was ■walking across the platform of a station on the same road that the otber town was on to take a train, there was a man laid his hand on ray arm and says, 'Now, don't make a fuss about it, and it'll be a good deal easier all around. ' And 1 lecognized in him the detective of the road, a man that I knew meant business, and I went along with him. "Being a man of brains, he had gone up to the house where the robbery was as soon as he had heard of it, which was the day after. There he had put himself in the burglar's place and followed in his footsteps as near as he could. He had had the ladder placed in just the same position, and he had gone up that and stepped off into the winlow and followed over his track inside he house as close a's he could guess at t, and then he'd come back to the window and got out on to the ladder, and so down to the ground. "The ladder went up on the right land side of this wiudow, and while it was easy enough to reach it, still it was quite a little step froin the sill to the ladder, and he noticed that when be had got his foot ou the ladder he swung back a little toward the house, so that his elbow just touched it in the angle between the window frame and the clapboards. He gave a little push on that elbow naturally and threw himself out again on ro the ladder. Then he stopped and looked at the spot where his elbow had touched. The paint was dry and there was no mark, but he called up the painters and learned that on themorning before - that was the morning after the house had been robbed - the paint at that place, on the cupboard by the window frame, and on the frame itself had been sinudged a little, and they'd tonched it over. That was all the detective wanted to know. From that time on he had been looking for a man with two paint spots of different colors on the left elbow of his coat, and 1 was the man. "It may seem ainazing to you that I hadn't rubbed the paint off. I had rubbed some of it off, and I was going to rub the rest off the uext day, and then I kept setting that next day ahead, as we are apt to do, and I finally wound up by letting it go altogether, the rest of it. There wasn't one chance in a thousandof its leading toanything, and even as it was I ruight have talked myeelf out of the paint, but I had a watch that I'd got in the house in my pocket, and that settled it. "That was one ladder. This was the other : "Looking arouud the outside of a house iu the country one night, I found a ladder lying on the ground against the rear of the house. They had some fruit trees in the garden, and I suppose they'd been working over theru, or ou the grape arbor rnaybe, and were going ou with the work next day and had left the ladder out iustead of taking it down cellar tor the night. It was sumruer, and on the side of the house there were two windows open in one rooru. I thought I'd set the ladder up then and go in one of those Windows. I sjst the ladder up and found it a little short, but by reachiug up aud getting a hold of the window sill and etepping up ou the ends of the side pieoes of the ladder I was a ble to get iu tolerable easy. I went through the house aud gathered up what there was to get and was turning to go from the last rooru wben I knocked a picture, over on a bureau and woke up the man that was sleeping in the room. I went back to the room I'd come in at and backed out the window and hung down for the ladder, and, by cracks, it ypasn't there! But I'd got to go all the same, and I let go and dropped. I saw the ladder as I was going down at the nekt window. I'd Lo out the wrong wiudow. I turned half over goiug down, struck on niy left side and broke my arm. "I got avvay that time, but Iwas laid up for six weeks, and af ter that I didn't