n, for Michel brought him his lunch and the old
Justine his dinner. For the greater part of the time he sat in bed
reading, but rose now and then and moved about the room. His wound
seemed to have suffered no great inconvenience from the morning's
outing. If he stood or walked too long it burned somewhat, and he had
the sensation of a tight band round the leg; but this passed after he
had lain down for a little while, or even sat in a chair with the leg
straight out before him; so he knew that he was not to be crippled very
much longer, and his thoughts began to turn more and more keenly upon
the matter of escape.

He realized, of course, that now, since he was once more able to walk,
he would be guarded with unremitting care every moment of the day, and
quite possibly every moment of the night as well, though the simple
bolting of his door on the outside would seem to answer the purpose save
when he was out-of-doors. Once he went to the two east windows and hung
out of them, testing as well as he could with his hands the strength and
tenacity of the ivy which covered that side of the house. He thought it
seemed strong enough to give hand and foot hold without being torn
loose, but he was afraid it would make an atrocious amount of noise if
he should try to climb down it, and, besides, he would need two very
active legs for that.

At another time a fresh idea struck him, and he put it at once into
action. There might be just a chance, when out one day with Michel, of
getting near enough to the wall which ran along the Clamart road to
throw something over it when the old man was not looking. In one of his
pockets he had a card-case with a little pencil fitted into a loop at
the edge, and in the case it was his custom to carry postage-stamps. He
investigated and found pencil and stamps. Of course he had nothing but
cards to write upon, and they were useless. He looked about the room and
went through an empty chest of drawers in vain, but at last, on some
shelves in the closet where his clothes had hung, he found several large
sheets of coarse white paper. The shelves were covered with it loosely
for the sake of cleanliness. He abstracted one of these sheets, and cut
it into squares of the ordinary note-paper size, and he sat down and
wrote a brief letter to Richard Hartley, stating where he was, that
Arthur Benham was there, the O'Haras, and, he thought, Captain Stewart.
He did not write the names out, but put instead th