on in answer to my letter, and other moneys to
a goodly amount in a letter from Governor Dinwiddie. These letters had
been carefully written, and the Marquis de Vaudreuil, into whose hands
they had first come, was gallant enough not to withhold them--though he
read them first.

Besides Indian corn, the parching of which amused me, I had dried ham
and tongue, and bread and cheese, enough, by frugal use, to last me a
month at least. I knew it would be a journey of six weeks or more to
the nearest English settlement, but if I could get that month's start I
should forage for the rest, or take my fate as I found it: I was used
to all the turns of fortune now. My knapsack gradually filled, and
meanwhile I slowly worked my passage into the open world. There was the
chance that my jailer would explore the knapsack; but after a time I
lost that fear, for it lay untouched with a blanket in a corner, and I
cared for my cell with my own hands.

The true point of danger was the window. There lay my way. It was
stoutly barred with iron up and down, and the bars were set in the solid
limestone. Soon after I entered this prison, I saw that I must cut a
groove in the stone from stanchion to stanchion, and then, by drawing
one to the other, make an opening large enough to let my body through.
For tools I had only a miserable knife with which I cut my victuals, and
the smaller but stouter one which Gabord had not taken from me. There
could be no pounding, no chiselling, but only rubbing of the hard
stone. So hour after hour I rubbed away, in constant danger of discovery
however. My jailer had a trick of sudden entrance, which would have been
grotesque if it had not been so serious to me. To provide against the
flurried inquisition of his eye, I kept near me bread well chewed, with
which I filled the hole, covering it with the sand I had rubbed or the
ashes of my pipe. I lived in dread of these entrances, but at last I
found that they chanced only within certain hours, and I arranged my
times of work accordingly. Once or twice, however, being impatient, I
scratched the stone with some asperity and noise, and was rewarded by
hearing my fellow stumbling in the hall; for he had as uncertain limbs
as ever I saw. He stumbled upon nothing, as you have seen a child trip
itself up by tangling of its feet.

The first time that he came, roused by the grating noise as he sat
below, he stumbled in the very centre of the cell, and fell upon his
knee