"Perhaps, but I have improved upon it. I add, for your further
information, that I am your nearest neighbor. I occupy the magnificent
concrete parlor next door to you, where I live a life of undisturbed
ease, but I have concluded at last to visit you, and here I am. How I
came I will explain later. But I am glad I am with you. One crowded hour
of glorious company is worth a hundred years in a solitary cell. I may
have got that a little wrong, too, but it sounds well."

He sat down in Turkish fashion on the floor, folding a pair of extremely
long legs beneath him, and regarded Ned with a slow, quizzical smile.
For the life of him the boy could not keep from smiling back. With the
nearer view he could see now that the eyes were blue and honest.

"You may think I'm a Mexican," continued the man in his mellow, pleasant
voice, "but I'm not. I'm a Texan--by the way of Maine. As I told you, I
live in the next tomb, the one on the right. I'm a watch, clock and tool
maker by trade and a bookworm by taste. Because of the former I've come
into your cell, and because of the latter I use the ornate language that
you hear. But of both those subjects more further on. Meanwhile, I
suppose it's you who have been yelling in here at the top of your voice
and disturbing a row of dungeons accustomed to peace and quiet."

"It was probably I, but I don't remember anything about it."

"It's not likely that you would, as I see you've had some one of the
seven hundred fevers that are customary along this coast. Yours must
have been of the shouting kind, as I heard you clean through the wall,
and, once when I was listening at the keyhole, you made a noise like
the yell of a charging army."

"You don't mean to say that you've been listening at the keyhole of my
cell."

"It's exactly what I mean. You wouldn't come to see your neighbor so he
decided to come to see you. Good communications correct evil manners.
See this?"

He held up a steel pronged instrument about six inches long.

"This was once a fork, a fork for eating, large and crude, I grant you,
but a fork. It took me more than a month to steal it, that is I had to
wait for a time when I was sure that the soldier who brought my food was
so lazy or so stupid that he would not miss it. I waited another week as
an additional precaution, and after that my task was easy. If the best
watch, clock and instrument maker in the State of Maine couldn't pick
any lock with a fork it was time f