Now Wogan had spent his boyhood at Rathcoffey among cliffs and rocks.  This wall, he reflected, could not be more than twelve feet high.  Would his strength last out?  He came to the conclusion that it must.

He took off his heavy boots and flung them one by one over the wall.  Then he pulled off his coat at the cost of some pain and an added weakness, for the coat was stuck to his wounds and had roughly staunched them.  He could feel the blood again soaking his shirt.  There was all the more need, then, for hurry.  He stood up, jammed his back into the angle of the wall, stretched out his arms on each side, pressing with his elbows and hands, and then bending his knees crossed his legs tailor fashion, and set the soles of his stockinged feet firmly against the bricks on each side.  He was thus seated as it were upon nothing, but retaining his position by the pressure of his arms and feet and his whole body.  Still retaining this position, very slowly, very laboriously, he worked himself up the angle, stopping now and then to regain his breath, now and then slipping back an inch.  But he mounted towards the top, and after a while the back of his head no longer touched the bricks.  His head was above the coping of the wall.

It was at this moment that he saw the lantern again, just at the corner where he had turned.  The lantern advanced slowly; it was now held aloft, now close to the ground.  Wogan was very glad he had thrown his boots and coat into the garden.  He made a few last desperate struggles; he could now place the palms of his hands behind him upon the coping, and he hoisted himself up and sat on the wall.

The lantern was nearer to him; he lay flat upon his face on the coping, and then lowering himself upon the garden side to the full length of his arms, he let go.  He fell into a litter of dead leaves, very soft and comfortable.  He would not have exchanged them at that moment for the Emperor’s own bed.  He lay upon his back and saw the dark branches above his head grow bright and green.  His pursuers were flashing their lantern on the other side; there was only the thickness of the wall between him and them.  He could even hear them whispering and the brushing of their feet.  He lay still as a mouse; and then the earth heaved up and fell away altogether beneath him.  Wogan had fainted.

CHAPTER VII

It was still night when Wogan opened his eyes, but the night was now clear of mist.  There was no moon, however, to give him a guess at the hour.  He lay upon his back among the dead leaves, and looking upwards at the stars, caught as it seemed in a lattice-work of branches, floated back into consciousness.  He moved, and the movement turned him sick with pain.  The knowledge of his wounds came to him and brought with it a clear recollection of the last three nights.  The ever-widening black strip in the door on the first night, the clutch at his throat and the leap from