ined. She had succumbed to the
sagacity of Columbus, and in a moment more her forehead rested
peacefully upon the work of Mr. Nicholas, M.D., that renowned traveller.

Let a man or a woman learn this passage by heart, so that asleep or
awake he can recall it even when he forgets his own name, and it will
not be labour lost. He will live long in the land. His sleep shall be
sweet, swift, and easy. Like Elsie he will never reach the haven of
Columbus--

"Not poppy nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsie syrrups of the world
Shall ever medicine him to that sweete sleepe"

like to the prose which Mr. Nicholas, M.D., wrote as he approached the
island of Trinidad.

Elsie slept. Time passed. My father filed and sawed in his recess,
muttering to himself, his head nearly through into the dark cupboard;
but one ear cast ever backward for the first grate of Mad Jeremy's key
in the lock of his door.

Before him he could see the thin line of light which was the crack of
the cupboard door. Beyond that sat Elsie with her head on her book,
her mind a thousand leagues away.

But between my father and the sleeping girl there was that bar of iron,
the upper part of which, by reason of some twist, was giving far more
difficulty than the under.

So it came about that, without daring to make himself heard, my father
was a witness of the final scene in the oven chamber behind the monks'
bakehouse. He had a bar of iron against his shoulder and a file knife
in his right hand, but for all that he was helpless to render any
assistance till he should have cut through the thick diagonal of metal,
and so made a way for himself into the dark cupboard.

All at once, my father, lying prone on his breast and sawing at the
obstruction as best he could, with his arms in a most uncomfortable
position for working--being higher than his head--became aware of an
additional light in the room which he could before see only dimly
illuminated by Elsie's candle.

A man had opened the outer fastenings. His dark shadow crossed the
crack of light which was the edge of the cupboard door ajar. There was
also a flash of a brighter light for a moment in my father's eyes,
which was the swinging of the lantern the man carried. He laid his
hand on the young girl's shoulder, and with a cry which went to Joseph
Yarrow's heart, Elsie came back from the Orinoco, to find Mad Jeremy
looking down upon her.

"Sleepin'?" he chuckled, "and over her book, th