"No," said Frank, measuring the window with his eye.  "I'll tell you how I think it was.  Tom knew, of course, that he couldn't get out of the house by the downstairs way without being nabbed.  He didn't know, of course, that the bunch of Huns weren't in condition to nab anybody. So the window was the only way left to him.  He took the ropes to the window with the idea of splicing them and climbing down by them.  But that would have taken time, and when he saw that the window wasn't very high up he made up his mind to drop.  The ropes were in his hand and he simply threw them out of the window as the easiest way of getting rid of them."