, and I hadn't. So Mr. Ablethorpe and I had just come along as
best we might--almost, but not quite, the day after the fair.

It was just before daybreak when my father worked his way through the
bar, and the fragments fell outward--stonework, plaster, cut iron--all
into the little cupboard. Of course, he had been working by the sense
of touch for hours. Many a time he had drawn the rough home-made file
raspingly across his wrist and hands. His face was stained with
dungeon mud, his hair uncropped and matted, his beard tangled, and, as
my mother said afterwards--

"If Mad Jeremy was a waur-looking creature than you, Joseph Yarrow, I
am none surprised that he frighted ye a' oot o' your leggings and
knee-breeks!"

When my father came out through the chamber which had so long been
Elsie's he groped about to find the entrance, his heart thumping--so he
owned to me--against his ribs lest the way should have been shut by the
madman, and he no better off than he had been before--nay, infinitely
worse, for the handiwork of the night would be sure to be discovered.
He had worked in the dark--furiously--without thought of covering up
his traces. But he had brought with him the iron bar which had been
his means of direct communication with Elsie from cell to cell.

It was cold weather, and the first drive of February wind as he stood
up in the ivy-covered ruin was, as my father expressed it, "like a dash
of water in the face to a man." The next instant he was through the
crumbling walls, startling the bats and sparrows with a shower of
debris, and lo! there before him he saw the house of Deep Moat
Grange--in a blaze!

Now comes out the deep and abiding loyalty of the man who had a name
for little else than driving a bargain hardly and keeping it to the
death. Perhaps, though, he looked upon it as that. Elsie had
supported him, fed him, given him drink, furnished him with tools, and
so now, though most men would have gone straight back to Breckonside to
seek for assistance, Joseph Yarrow--of whom I am proud to call myself
the son--struck right across the bridge and tore across the lawn among
the lily clumps straight for the front door of the burning house.

The staircase and hall were already filled with a stifling reek, but my
father could hear above him the crackling and dull roar of the flames,
hungry--like many wild beasts.

It was not dark, for the chamber door above was open, and the light of
the conflagration