half statements, that the commandant had been discreetly inquiring among some of the prisoners for a man who was well acquainted with the river Avon.  Since these inquiries ceased and Vetch disappeared about the same time, I was free to conclude that in Vetch the commandant had found his man.  Had he purchased his freedom at the price of treason to his country?  Were the French meditating an attack on Bristowe?  These were questions I could not answer; but you may be sure the knowledge that Vetch was gone acted as a whip to my determination, and I was more than ever resolved to find some way of leaving these walls behind.

We had concluded, Punchard and I, that our only course must be to pierce the castle wall and let ourselves down to the moat by means of a rope.  The latter portion of this scheme being manifestly the more likely, we decided to secure our rope first.  This was easier said than done.  Our coverlets were of such thin and rotten material, we should need to tear up several of them before, even carefully knotted, they would serve our purpose, and we could not risk the detection that would surely follow if any of them were missed by our guards.  When I went next to take my turn at drawing water from the well I carefully examined the rope by which the bucket was let down, thinking it might be possible to cut this one night at an hour when its loss would not be discovered till next day and the birds had flown.  But a close inspection showed that it was very rotten; evidently it had seen long service; and while it was still strong enough to stand the strain of a bucketful of water, I could not flatter myself it would safely bear my weight, to say nothing of the bosun, who was a deal heavier.

But since a rope we must have, I pleased myself with the fancy that if I should succeed in procuring that it might be taken as a good augury for success in the more difficult feat, the piercing of the wall.  Could we make a rope, I wondered?  We had a fair quantity of bast, in the mats that formed the only covering of the floor of our barracks, but not near enough to form a rope sufficiently stout to bear the weight of even the lightest of us; besides the tearing up of the mats could not fail to be discovered.

Racking my brains for some means of overcoming the difficulty, I suddenly bethought myself of trying a ruse.  I said nothing of my intention to Punchard (to the others I had as yet not breathed a word of our purpose) but the next time I went to the well I took a knife with me, and, choosing a portion of the rope where it was much frayed, I carefully sawed through one or two of the strands with the blunt edge.  The result was that when I was drawing the full bucket up, the rope snapped, the bucket fell to the bottom with a clatter, and I (to make the accident more convincing) toppled over on my back.  Up came one of the guard, and rated me soundly for my clumsiness, employing a succession of abusive terms which I stored in my memory for use in case of need.