cold air while he bathed, he
said, and his teeth chattered. Then he went back to work. He handled his
precious water with desperate economy. He began at the exposed end of
one adobe brick, soaking it as needed and digging it out with a chip of
earthenware knocked off one of the jars. The wall was two adobe lengths
in thickness, but after he had gotten out his first brick, it was easy,
by tugging and kicking, to tear out the others of the inside tier, since
luckily they did not dovetail in with the outer ones. Soon he had an
arch-shaped niche in the wall almost as high as his head when mounted on
Demijohn. The really tedious part remained, and it was an all night job.

To deepen the niche without breaking through, he had to scrape it out
piecemeal, wetting the dried mud as he toiled. He measured carefully
just how much of the thickness to leave, because the weed stalks in the
adobe could not be trusted to hold too thin a crust, and also he had to
take care that the water did not soak entirely through and make a
tell-tale blot on the outside when daylight should come. It was an
infinitely laborious task, and even with completion at last, there was
yet the question--which would break first, bone or masonry?

But he would learn when he should dash his horse's skull and his own
against the shell that remained. He saddled Demijohn, filled an empty
jar with the soft earth of his excavations, and waited. His dramatic
appearance at the instant of the door's opening was not a coincidence.
It was minute calculation. Already mounted, he faced the wall, with the
heavy jar poised over his head in both hands, his spurs drawn back to
strike. He waited until sentinels and shooting squad had gathered at the
door. He waited to draw their fire, to empty their muskets. But he did
not wait until the door should open enough to give them unimpeded aim.
In the second of its opening he drove back the spurs, hurled the jar
against the wall, and--crashed through his dungeon as easily as breaking
a sucked egg.

"But," demanded Jacqueline eagerly, "how is it you did feel?" She was
disappointed that the personal equation had had so little prominence.

"I don't recollect," said Driscoll, puzzled, "there was nothing hurting
especially."

"No, no! Your sensations facing death, then escaping?"

He brightened. "W'y yes," he replied, happy to catch her meaning. "I
felt toler'ble busy."

She sighed despairingly. Yet there was plenty left her for wond