When he revived he found himself lying upon a rough stone pavement and it was still dark.  He saw above a narrow cleft of somber sky, and something cold and trailing lay across his face.  He shivered with repulsion, snatched at it to throw it off, and found that it was his rope.  Then he felt of himself cautiously and fearfully, but found that no bones were broken.  Nor was he bruised to any degree and now he knew that he could not have fallen more than two or three feet.  Perhaps he had struck first upon the little pack which he had fastened upon his back.  It reminded him that he was shoeless and coatless and undoing the pack he reclothed himself fully.

He was quite sure that he had not lain there more than a quarter of an hour.  Nothing had happened while he was unconscious.  It was a dark little alley in the rear of the prison, and the buildings on the other side that abutted upon it were windowless.  He walked cautiously to the mouth of the alley, and looked up and down the street.  He saw no one, and, pulling his cap down over his eyes, he started instinctively toward the north, because it was to the far north that he wished to go.  He was fully aware that he faced great dangers, almost impossibilities.  Practically nothing was in his favor, save that he spoke excellent Spanish and also Mexican versions of it.

He went for several hundred yards along the rough and narrow street, and he began to shiver again.  Now it was from cold, which often grows intense at night in the great valley of Mexico.  Nor was his wasted frame fitted to withstand it.  He was assailed also by a fierce hunger.  He had carried self-denial to the utmost limit, and nature was crying out against him in a voice that must be heard.

He resolved to risk all and obtain food.  Another hundred yards and he saw crouched in an angle of the street an old woman who offered tortillas and frijoles for sale.  He went a little nearer, but apprehension almost overcame him.  It might be difficult for him to pass for a Mexican and she would give the alarm.  But he went yet nearer and stood where he could see her face.  It was broad, fat and dark, more Aztec than Spaniard, and then he approached boldly, his speed increased by the appetizing aroma arising from some flat cakes that lay over burning charcoal.

“I will take these, my mother,” he said in Mexican, and leaning over he snatched up half a dozen gloriously hot tortillas and frijoles.  A cry of indignation and anger was checked at the old woman’s lips as two small silver coins slipped from the boy’s hands, and tinkled pleasantly together in her own.

Holding his spoils in his hands Ned walked swiftly up the street.  He glanced back once, and saw that the old Aztec woman had sunk back into her original position.  He had nothing to fear from any alarm by her, and he looked ahead for some especially dark nook in which he could devour the precious food.  He saw none, but he caught a glimpse beyond of foliage, and he recalled enough of the city of Mexico to know what it was.  It was the Zocalo or garden of the cathedral, the Holy Metropolitan Church of Mexico.  Above the foliage he could see the dark walls, and above them he saw the dome, as he had seen it from the window of his prison.  Over the dome itself rose a beautiful lantern, in which a light was now burning.