rse 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.

"I fingered it for an hour, looking at it in every way, and then I
saw that there were some small holes pricked. Well, I could not
ask the woman what they meant, as I had told her I picked it up;
so I went across to an Irishman, whose acquaintance I had made the
day before, and who had recommended me, if I wanted work, to hire
one of these chairs and get a comrade to help me carry it. I could
see that he was a man who had seen better days. I expect he had
come over in the time of the troubles, and had been forced to earn
his living as he could; so I went to him.

"'I have got a message,' I said, 'pricked on a piece of paper. I
picked it up, and am curious-like to know what it is about.'

"So he held it up to the light, and read out your message.

"'I think,' says he, 'it is some colleen who has made an
appointment with her lover. Maybe she has been shut up by her
father, and thought it the best way to send him a message.'

"'That is it, no doubt,' says I; 'and it is plain that it never
came to his hand.'

"The next day, I went to him again with the second letter.

"'It's lying you have been to me,' he said. 'It is some plot you
are concerned in.'

"'Well,' says I, 'you are not far wrong. I have some friends who
have suffered for the Stuarts, and who have been laid by the leg,
and it's myself who is trying to get them out of the hands of
their persecutors.'

"'In that case, I am with you,' he said, 'for I have suffered for
the cause myself; and if you want assistance, you can depend upon
me.'

"'Thank you kindly,' says I. 'Just at present it is a one man job,
but maybe, if I get them out