either side--the
work went on much faster. You see, I was always in fear of Mad Jeremy
or somebody coming to search. But, as a matter of fact, nobody looked
near me, and on Elsie's side she was protected by the dark cupboard.
Still, it was better to leave nothing to chance, and to treat Mad
Jeremy, with his wild eyes and insane freaks, as if he had been the
most suspicious of jailers.

But any one who gives the matter a thought will see in what a
humiliating position I was placed, utterly forgotten, as it seemed,
even by those who had taken possession of my cheque in order to compel
me to sign it. Was it possible, I asked myself, that they had found
some one to forge my signature, negotiated it at a distance, and fled
with the proceeds? Of Mad Jeremy I still had news. For at intervals
he supplied Miss Stennis with food, sometimes days old, for it was but
seldom that he baked now; and though the weather was milder without,
both Elsie's cell and mine became much less comfortable, though not, so
far as I could observe, damp.

It was evidently a period of great excitement with the lunatic who had
constituted himself our caretaker. Putting my ear to the excavation, I
could hear him whistling and singing while he was in the chamber behind
the oven talking to Elsie. Once I heard him. playing upon some
instrument, which sounded like the bagpipes, but was in reality his
precious fiddle. And I will say that I lay and gripped my nails into
my hands in impotent anger to think that there was, according to my
most accurate measurements, at least a foot of stone and lime, laid
with burned shell and sand as only the old monks knew how, all to pick
out piecemeal with the point of my weapon before I could be of the
slightest use to the young lady in the case of an attack.

Once it was evident that Jeremy had been listening at the door. He
opened upon me suddenly and demanded what was that knocking he had
heard? I answered that I was trying to attract attention to the fact
that I had been several days without either food or water. He looked
at me suspiciously, and said--

"It sounded more like somebody beating a tune!"

I turned over immediately, and, with my knuckles as far away as
possible from the boards I had been so long patiently sawing out, I
tattooed the measure of "The Wind that Shakes the Barley," the
identical tune the madman had been playing in Elsie's chamber.

"Oh!" he cried, "can you fiddle?"

"No," sa