e ordered the trumpets
to sound to horse. The dragoons, who, weary with their long march, had
just unsaddled, turned out wondering at the order; but when they heard
what had happened, they mounted with an impatience for vengeance equal
to that of their general. Arriving at the village they found, to their
great disappointment, that the murderers had fled, and that hardly any
of the inhabitants remained. They found, however, hidden in the church,
the clothes of some of the murdered guardsmen. The sacristan of the
church was alleged by the inhabitants, who were narrowly examined, to
have taken an active part in the slaughter, and the earl ordered him to
be hung up at once to the knocker of his own door. The troops then rode
up to the top of the hill, and the earl and his aides de camp dismounted
at the edge of the pit. They had procured a rope at the village,
although the inhabitants insisted that no one could be found alive, as
the pit, which was a disused one, was of vast depth.

"Is any one alive down there?" the earl shouted.

"Yes, yes," a voice cried a short distance below them. "Thank God
friends have come; but help me quickly, for I cannot hold on much
longer."

Jack seized the rope and twisted one end round his body. Several of the
soldiers lowered him down, and some twenty feet below the edge he came
upon the man who had spoken. As he fell he had caught some bushes which
grew in the side of the old pit, and having managed to find a ledge
on which to place his feet, had maintained his grasp in this perilous
position the whole day. As the rope was amply strong enough to hold two,
Jack clasped his arms around the man's body and called to those above to
haul up. They were soon at the surface.

The soldier, who had fainted when he found himself in safety, was laid
down and brandy poured down his throat, and Jack, to his astonishment
and satisfaction, recognized in him his old friend Sergeant Edwards. He
did not wait, however, for him to recover sensibility, but at once told
the troopers to lower him again to the end of the rope. This they did,
and Jack then shouted several times, but received no answer. He then
dropped a small stone he had brought down with him, but no sound came
back in return, and, satisfied that none of the soldiers could have
survived the fall, for he was already more than sixty feet below the
surface, he shouted to those above to draw him up. He found that Edwards
had now recovered his sense