ope for me in the old walls, in the
tiny window, or in the massive door. It was only in this one direction
of the wooden screen that there was any possibility of exploring. My
reason told me that if I should pierce it--which did not seem very
difficult--it would only be to find myself in another cell as strong
as that in which I then was. Yet I had always rather be doing something
than doing nothing, so I bent all my attention and all my energies upon
the wooden wall. Two planks were badly joined, and so loose that I was
certain I could easily detach them. I searched about for some tool,
and I found one in the leg of a small bed which stood in the corner. I
forced the end of this into the chink of the planks, and I was about to
twist them outward when the sound of rapid footsteps caused me to pause
and to listen.

I wish I could forget what I heard. Many a hundred men have I seen die
in battle, and I have slain more myself than I care to think of, but all
that was fair fight and the duty of a soldier. It was a very different
matter to listen to a murder in this den of assassins. They were pushing
someone along the passage, someone who resisted and who clung to my
door as he passed. They must have taken him into the third cell, the
one which was farthest from me. "Help! Help!" cried a voice, and then I
heard a blow and a scream. "Help! Help!" cried the voice again, and then
"Gerard! Colonel Gerard!" It was my poor captain of infantry whom they
were slaughtering.

"Murderers! Murderers!" I yelled, and I kicked at my door, but again I
heard him shout and then everything was silent. A minute later there was
a heavy splash, and I knew that no human eye would ever see Auret again.
He had gone as a hundred others had gone whose names were missing from
the roll-calls of their regiments during that winter in Venice.

The steps returned along the passage, and I thought that they were
coming for me. Instead of that they opened the door of the cell next to
mine and they took someone out of it. I heard the steps die away up the
stair.

At once I renewed my work upon the planks, and within a very few minutes
I had loosened them in such a way that I could remove and replace them
at pleasure. Passing through the aperture I found myself in the farther
cell, which, as I expected, was the other half of the one in which I had
been confined. I was not any nearer to escape than I had been before,
for there was no other wooden wall which