“Where are you taking us to?” Desmond asked, as they descended the hill.

“I have got a lodging in a house out in the fields.  I said that I was an Irishman who had come to London in search of employment, and that I expected three friends to join me, and that we intended to hire chairs and carry the gentry about, for here they seem too lazy to walk, and everyone is carried; though it is small blame to them, for dirtier streets I never saw.  They are just full of holes, where you go in up to the knee in mud and filth of all kinds.  Faith, there are parts of Paris which we can’t say much for, but the worst of them are better than any here, except just the street they call Cheapside, which goes on past Saint Paul’s, and along the Strand to Westminster.”

“What have you brought these sticks for, Mike?”

For he had handed, to each, a heavy bludgeon.

“Sure, your honour, ’tis not safe to be in the streets after nightfall.  It is like that part of Paris where no dacent man could walk, without being assaulted by thieves and cutthroats.  Dressed as we are, it is not likely anyone would interfere with us in the hope of finding money on us, but they are not particular at all, at all, and a party of these rascals might try to roll us in the mire, just for fun.  So it is as well to be prepared.”

However, they met with no interruption, passed out through Holborn Bars, and soon arrived at the house where Mike had taken a lodging.  They were not sorry, however, that they were armed, for, several times, they heard outbursts of drunken shouting and the sound of frays.

Mike had hired two rooms.  In one of these were three straw beds, for the officers.  He himself slept on a blanket on the floor of the other room, which served as kitchen and sitting room.

Now, for the first time, they were able to talk freely.

“Mike, we have not said much to you, yet,” Desmond began, “but I and these gentlemen are fully conscious that you have saved us from death, for we hear that Government is determined to push matters to the extremity, and to have all the officers captured condemned to be hanged.”

“Bad cess to them!” Mike exclaimed, indignantly.  “If I had two or three of them, it’s mighty little they would talk of execution, after I and me stick had had a few minutes’ converse with them.

“As to the getting you out, I assure you, your honour, there is little I have done, except to carry out your orders.  When I first saw the prison, and the little white flag flying from the window, I said to myself that, barring wings, there was no way of getting to you; and it was only when I got your first letter that I saw it might be managed.  Faith, that letter bothered me, entirely.  I took it to the woman downstairs, and asked her to read it for me, saying that I had picked it up in the street, and wondered what it was about.  She was no great scholar, but she made out that it was writ in a foreign language, and seemed to her to be a bit of an old bill.  When I took it up to my room, I looked at it every way.  I knew, of course, that it was a message, somehow, but devil a bit could I see where it came in.