s!" he cried; and walking back to the opposite wall
he took a run and a jump, and succeeded in getting his hands upon the
old stone sill, but only to slip back again.

He repeated his efforts several times, but in vain; and at last finding
this was hopeless, unless for the time being he had been furnished with
the hind-legs of a kangaroo, he took out his pocket-knife, opened it,
and began to cut a notch in the wall.

It was the soft sandstone of the district, and he was not long in
carving a good resting-place for one foot; and this he followed up,
cutting another niche about a foot higher.

"I'm making a pretty mess," he muttered as he looked down; "serve 'em
right for shutting me up."

On he went carving away with the big jack-knife, which was an offering
made by Billy Waters, and his perseverance was at last rewarded by his
contriving a series of niches in the stone wall by whose means he
climbed up sufficiently high to enable him to reach the iron bars, when
he easily drew himself up to the broad sill, upon which he could sit,
and with one arm through the bars, make himself pretty comfortable and
enjoy the view.

His first glance, though, was at the iron bars embedded in the stone,
and he came to the conclusion that, given enough time, he could pick
away the cement and make his escape; but as it would be a matter of time
he thought that perhaps it would be better to defer it until he knew
where he was.

"Looking due east," said Hilary, as he began taking observations; "then
the sea must be to the right, over those hills; and out here to the
left--my word, what a pretty place! Why, it is like a park!"

For gazing to the left, or northward, his eye ranged over the lovely
undulating Sussex Weald, with its park-like, well-wooded hills and
valleys, now in the first blush of their summer beauty, the leafage all
tender green, and the soft meadowlike pastures gilded with the dazzling
yellow of the over-abundant crowfoot.

There was a thick dew upon the grass, which sparkled like myriads of
diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires in the morning sun. Here was a patch
of vivid blue where the wild hyacinths were peering out from the edge of
a wood which, farther in, was tinted with the delicate French-white of
the anemones; the cuckoo-flowers rose with their pale lavender turrets
of bloom above the hedgeside herbage, and the rich purple of the spotted
orchis was on every side.

There was a cottage here, a mossy-roofed ba