ry, "and
I'm so hungry that if they, whoever they are, don't soon bring me some
breakfast I shall eat my boots."

"Why, they must have carried me in here while I was asleep," he thought;
and then, "Hallo, old fellow!" he cried, laughing, "there you are, are
you?"

For just then, completely eclipsing the thrush in power, a donkey--
probably, he thought, the one that brought him there--trumpeted forth
his own resonant song, the song that made the savage Irishman exclaim
that it was "a wonderful bird for singing, only it seemed to have a
moighty cowld." And if there had been any doubt before what donkey it
was, Hilary's mind was set at rest, for as the bray ended in a
long-drawn minor howl there came two or three sharp raps, just as if the
jackass has relieved his feelings with these good kicks, as was the
case, up against the boards of the shed in which he was confined.

"Well, this is a rum set-out," said Hilary, getting up, and then bending
down to have a rub at his legs, which still suffered from the
compression of the cord. "Hang it all! what a mess my uniform is in
with this chaffy straw!"

He set to and brushed off as much as he could, and then began to inspect
the place in which he was imprisoned, to find that the ideas he had
formed of it in the dark were not far wrong, inasmuch as there was a
plastered wall, a stone floor, an ancient-looking door with a big
keyhole, through which he could see nothing, and the Gothic window with
iron bars across, and no glass to keep out the air.

"Well, if any fellow had told me about this I should have said he was
inventing. I suppose I'm a prisoner. I wonder what Lipscombe thinks of
my not coming back. Well, I can't help it; and he must come with some
of our men to cut me out."

"Come to tea, Jack! Come to tea, Jack! Whips Kitty! Whips Kitty!
Whips Kitty!"

"Yes, I'll come to tea," said Hilary, as the thrush sang on; "but how am
I to come? Oh! I say, I am so precious hungry. I could eat the
hardest biscuit and the toughest bit of salt beef that ever a fellow put
between his teeth. They might bring me some prog."

Hilary was well rested by his sleep, and felt as active as a young goat
now, so running to the door he tried it again, to find it shut fast, and
no chance of getting it open. So he turned at once to the window, and
looked around for something to enable him to reach it, but looked in
vain, for there was nothing to be seen.

"Never mind; here goe