I could only thank him most warmly for his interest, realizing fully
from his grave manner my desperate situation, and follow my silent
conductor down some narrow and steep stairs until we stood upon the
cemented floor of the basement. Here a heavy door in the stone division
wall was opened; I was pushed forward into the dense darkness within,
and the lock clicked dully behind me. So thick was the wall I could not
even distinguish the retreating steps of the jailer.

Tired as I was from the intense strain of the past thirty-six hours,
even my anxious thoughts were insufficient to keep me awake. Feeling my
way cautiously along the wall, I came at last to a wide wooden bench,
and stretching my form at full length upon it, pillowed my head on one
arm, and almost instantly was sound asleep.

When I awoke, sore from my hard bed and stiffened by the uncomfortable
position in which I lay, it was broad daylight. That the morning was,
indeed, well advanced I knew from the single ray of sunlight which
streamed in through a grated window high up in the wall opposite me and
fell like a bar of gold across the rough stone floor. I was alone. Even
in the dark of the previous night I had discovered the sole pretence to
furniture in the place. The room itself proved to be a large and almost
square apartment, probably during the ordinary occupancy of the house a
receptacle for wood or garden produce, but now peculiarly well adapted
to the safeguarding of prisoners.

The solid stone walls were of sufficient height to afford no chance of
reaching the great oak girders that supported the floor above, even had
the doing so offered a favorable opening for escape. There were,
apparently, but three openings of any kind,--the outside window through