“Well, Master Williams,” he said, “you have been very wicked, to be sure, and I thought it would have done me good to see you hanged.  I know I am doing wrong; but if they hang me, too, I cannot help it.  For Christ’s sake, get out of this place; I cannot bear the thought of it.”

With that, he slipped into my hand a chisel, a file, and a saw.  I received the implements with great joy, and thrust them into my bosom.

I waited for bright moonlight; it was necessary that I should work in the night, and between nine and seven.

It was ten o’clock when I first took off my handcuffs.  I then filed through my fetters, and next performed the same service to the three iron bars that secured my window.  All this was the work of more than two hours.  But, even with the bars removed, the space was by no means wide enough to admit the passing of my body.  Therefore, I had to loosen the brickwork, and this I did partly with the chisel, and partly with one of the iron bars.  When the space was sufficient for my purpose, I crept through the opening and stepped upon a shed outside.

The prison wall, which now had to be scaled, was of considerable height, and there was no resource for me but that of making a breach in its lower part.  For six hours I worked at this with incredible labour, and at last I had made a passage.  But the day was breaking, and in ten minutes’ time the keepers would probably enter my apartment and see the devastation I had left.

I decided to avoid the town as much as possible, and depended upon the open country for protection; and so I passed along the lane beyond the wall.

I was free of my prison, but I was destitute, and had not a shilling in the world.

IV.—­The Doom of Falkland

Mr. Falkland’s implacable animosity pursued me beyond the prison.  A hundred guineas was at once offered for my recapture, and though I evaded arrest for some months, a man named Gines, who had at one time been a member of a gang of robbers, undertook to lay hold of me, and tracked me to my place of hiding in London.  By this time the hawkers were actually selling papers in the streets containing “The most Wonderful and Surprising History and Miraculous Adventures of Caleb Williams,” for a halfpenny, and I had the temerity to purchase one.  In this I was informed how I, Caleb Williams, “first robbed, and then brought false accusations against my master”; how I attempted at divers times to break out of prison, and at last succeeded “in the most wonderful and incredible manner”; and how I had travelled the kingdom in disguise, and was now lying concealed in London, with a hundred guineas reward for my discovery.

It seemed then that there was no end to my persecution, and I thought of death as my only release.  That very night the landlord of my humble lodgings brought Gines to the house, and gave me up to the authorities.

And now the result of all my labour to get out of prison and evade my pursuers had brought me back to my starting-place!  Never was a human creature so hunted by enemies.  What hope was there they would ever cease their persecution.