I cannot hear them,’ thought I, ’then it is unlikely that they can hear me’; and I waited with the utmost impatience until the time when the inspector should have come round for his nightly peep through our grating.  Then having peered through the darkness, and seen nothing of the sentry, who was doubtless crouching in some corner out of the rain, I felt that the moment was come.  I removed the bar, pulled out the stone, and motioned to my companion to pass through.

‘After you, Colonel,’ said he.

‘Will you not go first?’ I asked.

‘I had rather you showed me the way.’

‘Come after me, then, but come silently, as you value your life.’

In the darkness I could hear the fellow’s teeth chattering, and I wondered whether a man ever had such a partner in a desperate enterprise.  I seized the bar, however, and mounting upon my stool, I thrust my head and shoulders into the hole.  I had wriggled through as far as my waist, when my companion seized me suddenly by the knees, and yelled at the top of his voice:  ‘Help!  Help!  A prisoner is escaping!’

Ah, my friends, what did I not feel at that moment!  Of course, I saw in an instant the game of this vile creature.  Why should he risk his skin in climbing walls when he might be sure of a free pardon from the English for having prevented the escape of one so much more distinguished than himself?  I had recognized him as a poltroon and a sneak, but I had not understood the depth of baseness to which he could descend.  One who has spent his life among gentlemen and men of honour does not think of such things until they happen.

The blockhead did not seem to understand that he was lost more certainly than I. I writhed back in the darkness, and seizing him by the throat, I struck him twice with my iron bar.  At the first blow he yelped as a little cur does when you tread upon its paw.  At the second, down he fell with a groan upon the floor.  Then I seated myself upon my bed, and waited resignedly for whatever punishment my gaolers might inflict upon me.

But a minute passed and yet another, with no sound save the heavy, snoring breathing of the senseless wretch upon the floor.  Was it possible, then, that amid the fury of the storm his warning cries had passed unheeded?  At first it was but a tiny hope, another minute and it was probable, another and it was certain.  There was no sound in the corridor, none in the courtyard.  I wiped the cold sweat from my brow, and asked myself what I should do next.

One thing seemed certain.  The man on the floor must die.  If I left him I could not tell how short a time it might be before he gave the alarm.  I dare not strike a light, so I felt about in the darkness until my hand came upon something wet, which I knew to be his head.  I raised my iron bar, but there was something, my friends, which prevented me from bringing it down.  In the heat of fight I have slain many men—­men of honour, too, who had done me no injury.  Yet here was this wretch, a creature too foul to live, who had tried to work me so great a mischief, and yet I could not bring myself to crush his skull in.  Such deeds are very well for a Spanish partida—­or for that matter a sansculotte of the Faubourg St Antoine—­but not for a soldier and a gentleman like me.