Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/241

Rh Yet this brought him a second chance, for being now declared an Irishman he managed to get himself locked up with the Irish, who had their quarters on the handier side of the prison; and that same night broke out of window with two other fellows, got over the prison wall, and hid in the woods beyond. But on the second day a party of wood-rangers attacked them with guns and captured them; and back they went, and were condemned to six years in irons.

This, as it turned out, didn't amount to much; for, while they were waiting to be marched off to the galleys, their jailor came with news that a son was born to the Emperor, and they were pardoned in honour of it. But instead of putting them back in their old quarters, he fixed them up for a fortnight in a room by themselves, being fearful that such bad characters would contaminate the other prisoners. This room was an upstairs one in a building on the edge of the ramparts, and after a few nights they broke through the ceiling into an empty chamber, which had a window looking on the roof. With a rope made of their bedclothes they lowered themselves clean over the ramparts on to the edge of the precipice over the river; and along this they passed—having no daylight to make them giddy—and took their way northwards across the fields.

Well, it doesn't come into my tale to tell you what they went through. Bosistow wrote out an account of it years after, and you shall read it for