to say, which with those
who have done business with me will be sufficient. One morning I awoke
early, before the slate-blue crack, with a star wandering across it,
which was the jackdaw's front door, had changed to the grey of a
winter's morning. I lay on my comfortless straw couch, wondering why
it was that my prison was not colder. It could not be that it was so
far underground as to be warm like the bottom of a mine, by its own
distance from the earth's surface. There were the exits and the
entrances of the jackdaws to witness against that.

Still, though cold enough at times, the fact remained that the
temperature of my prison never descended to the freezing point.
Indeed, it had probably been chosen as a winter home by the birds on
that account. Once or twice I had seen a flake of snow fluttering
down, but these melted before they could be discerned on the oaken
floor of the curious circular cellar in which I lay.

I was, as I say, pondering over these things, about home, too, and what
Joseph would be doing. I almost blush to write, but I began
automatically knocking out a sentence in our old "Morse" code which had
amused us during the fever year.

"Is any one there?" I spelled the words out.

And I actually sat upright with wonder when I heard come through the
thick oak of the partition, first five distinct knocks, then, after a
pause, one.

[Illustration: "I heard first five distinct knocks then after a
pause--one."]

It was the letter E! But, then, only Joe and I knew of it! My heart
sank. I thought in swift, lightning flashes. Had my son been captured
also? But the person at the other side of the wall went on spelling,
one knock, pause, three knocks.

It was the letter L!

And so with the quiet regularity of an expert, the sentence came back
to me.

"Elsie here--Who are you?"

I felt much inclined, of course, to ask who Elsie might be, but I made
my answer--fearing a trap--by the mere spelling out of my name and
address, "Joseph Yarrow, Breckonside."

Then there was tapped out hurried, imperfectly, in a manner denoting
undue and even foolish emotion--"Dearest Joe. I thank you for trying
to help me. Your Elsie."

There was evidently some mistake. No one had a right to answer me
thus--least of all an Elsie--my wife's name being Mary, and she as
little likely to address me as "Dearest Joe," as to call me the Grand
Mogul! In fact, it was nothing less than a prodigious liberty--whoev