therefore be known, at once, that we were
concerned. Five or six of our fellows have already had their heads
chopped off, on suspicion of having aided Royalists to escape. They
don't mind whom they lay hands on, and they don't trouble
themselves to search, but just seize the first they come to who,
perhaps in a cabaret, has said a word against their doings.

"As to the trials, they are no trials at all. One of their fellows
comes in and says, 'I heard this man abusing the authorities, and I
accuse him also of being concerned in the escape of so and so.' It
is no odds what the prisoner says. The fellow who acts as judge
looks at the jury, who are all their creatures; they say 'Guilty
'and he says' Death!' and the accused are marched off again to the
prison, to wait until their turn comes for the guillotine. Well you
see, if this prison was broken into as you propose, and it was
known that the sailors had a hand in it, the chances are that they
would march a couple of hundred of us into the great square, which
would be choke full of the National Guard and volunteers, and just
shoot us down."

Jean was silent. The probability that things would go as the man
said was so evident that he had no answer.

"I think the way to get over that difficulty," Leigh said, when he
saw that Jean was puzzled, "would be for you all quietly to buy
other clothes or, better still, for them to be bought for you by
your wives. They should be such clothes as the peasants buy, when
they come into the town. It would then be supposed that the attack
was made by a party of Breton peasantry. As a good many other
prisoners would escape, in addition to Monsieur Martin and your
captain's wife, there would be no reason to suppose that the plot
was specially arranged to aid their escape, or that any of the
people of this town were concerned in the matter."

"That is so, Master Leigh," Rouget said. "It might be managed in
that way. But I think that most of our chaps had better be told off
for firing the town. I think that a good many might be willing to
undertake that job, for I have heard it said, many and many a time,
that they would like to burn the sewer rats out. There are other
men who would, I am sure, rather join in the attack on the jail, if
they could do so without putting the lives of all of us in danger.

"As to getting hold of an artilleryman, I don't know that that
would be difficult. The men employed on that sort of work are all
old so