rnace.

Elsie passed it to me through the communicating hole. But there was a
hooked handle at the end which prevented it coming all the way till
Elsie in her dark cupboard had made a hole sufficiently large to push
it through; while I, with Elsie's knife, cut out a piece of the wooden
lining of my cell so that it could again be fitted in to avoid
suspicion. Then I had a thoroughly strong bar of iron in my
possession, with which, considerably elated, I began to make a way
through into Elsie's room. But it was slow work. The knife had first
to be serrated on the back to form a kind of rough saw. I did this
with a sort of projecting tooth or claw of the rake handle, where it
had been broken off. And I own that the work was not without a certain
charm of its own. In my youth I remember--to my shame--to have carried
the life of a certain Count of Monte Cristo--whose name I have not met
with elsewhere, but with whom I should much have liked to have had
business relations--under my waistcoat to school. He appears to have
been, like us, a prisoner. And his account of how he pierced thick
walls was not wholly without interest. I wished I had kept the notes I
made in my pocket-book reporting his manner of procedure. It was from
him, for instance, that I got the idea of the rook's feather, while the
jackdaws, chunnering to themselves up above and occasionally descending
to peck, did the rest.

Ultimately I was enabled to cut through the wooden lining of my cell,
only to find the wall behind of solid masonry, but with the lime
hopefully crumbly round the little holes by which the bars passed into
Elsie's cupboard.

All this took some time, and I required the help of Miss Stennis at
every step. I fear some nights the young lady did not get much sleep,
for every particle of debris--stone, lime, sawdust--had to be conveyed
through the narrow holes made for the leg bolts, then taken up in the
palms of her hands and conveyed to the little trapdoor behind her bed
beneath which was the flowing water. It was not much of an operation
on my side--rough work, ill done--and had any man in my employ tried to
pass off such workmanship on me, I should have showed him round the
yard with the point of my boot--ay, and out at the front gate, too!

Still, it was done, which was the main thing. And after I had
bethought me to widen the two bolt holes by making them one--all, that
is, except the pieces of wood which hid the tunnel on