not remind you that there is a man-at-arms to the right of the tower.
You will take care, of course, to choose a dark night, and wait till
the sentinel is asleep. You must take your chance of being shot;
but--'

"'All right! All right! At least I shall not rot here,' cried the
young man.

"'Well, that may happen nevertheless,' replied the jailer, with a
stupid expression.

"Beauvoir thought this was merely one of the aimless remarks that such
folks indulge in. The hope of freedom filled him with such joy that he
could not be troubled to consider the words of a man who was no more
than a better sort of peasant. He set to work at once, and had filed
the bars through in the course of the day. Fearing a visit from the
Governor, he stopped up the breaches with bread crumb rubbed in rust
to make it look like iron; he hid his rope, and waited for a favorable
night with the intensity of anticipation, the deep anguish of soul
that makes a prisoner's life dramatic.

"At last, one murky night, an autumn night, he finished cutting
through the bars, tied the cord firmly to the stump, and perched
himself on the sill outside, holding on by one hand to the piece of
iron remaining. Then he waited for the darkest hour of the night, when
the sentinels would probably be asleep; this would be not long before
dawn. He knew the hours of their rounds, the length of each watch,
every detail with which prisoners, almost involuntarily, become
familiar. He waited till the moment when one of the men-at-arms had
spent two-thirds of his watch and gone into his box for shelter from