ngements. At last he fell asleep, and it
seemed that the vile roar of the waking bell began a few minutes later.

In the morning Geoffrey sat face to face with the first and least of his
difficulties: he had no means of writing to his unknown friends. But the
mind springs to experiment when it is left alone. In a minute he had
paper, pen, and ink, and, stretched on the floor, with his only book,
the prison Bible, for a desk, he was writing his answer.

The ink was on the floor, composed of the asphalt dust of which the
floor was made. He had swept it into a little heap with his hard
floor-brush, and mixed it with water from his washing basin. His pen was
the wire-twisted end of his leathern boot-lace; and his paper, whole
leaves carefully torn from the Bible, across the small type of which he
wrote in heavy letters as follows:

"We cannot possibly escape from within the prison. Our cells are on
the third tier, opening into the prison, and two of our friends are
old and infirm. We must escape from the guards while employed
outside the walls, conceal ourselves till night, and then follow
your instructions. To-day we shall begin our preparations. We
cannot tell how soon we may make the attempt, or how long we shall
have to wait. Wednesdays and Saturdays are the only days on which
it can be done; and we must wait for a very rainy or foggy evening
on one of those days. The present weather is in our favor, so do
not leave the cottage empty day or night for a few weeks."

Geoffrey concealed his letter, ate his breakfast when the six o'clock
bell rang, and the bolts of five hundred cells shot back by one mighty
stroke of a steam piston-rod, he paraded with his companions, and the
four were marched off to their work at the monument.

Sydney and the Duke walked together in rear of Geoffrey and
Featherstone. The Duke, in order to keep up with the regulation pace,
secretly clung to Sydney's arm, which he dropped when the officer looked
round and took again when the danger had passed.

When they came to the tool-shed, the prisoners went in one by one for
their tools, which were piled up and taken away day after day, by the
same men in the same order. The portable steam-engine was to the left of
the door. Geoffrey went straight to it, opened the furnace door, and
left his letter.

A few minutes later, when they were on the cairn, Featherstone's
anxiety spoke in his eyes, an