uriously with his long knife upon one of the
billets of wood.

So weary was the young guardsman that it was long past noon, and the sun
was shining out of a cloudless blue sky, before he awoke. For a moment,
enveloped as he was in straw, and with the rude arch of the dungeon
meeting in four rough-hewn groinings above his head, he stared about him
in bewilderment. Then in an instant the doings of the day before, his
mission, the ambuscade, his imprisonment, all flashed back to him, and
he sprang to his feet. His comrade, who had been dozing in the corner,
jumped up also at the first movement, with his hand on his knife, and a
sinister glance directed towards the door.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" said he, "I thought it was the man."

"Has some one been in, then?"

"Yes; they brought those two loaves and a jug of water, just about dawn,
when I was settling down for a rest."

"And did he say anything?"

"No; it was the little black one."

"Simon, they called him."

"The same. He laid the things down and was gone. I thought that maybe
if he came again we might get him to stop."

"How, then?"

"Maybe if we got these stirrup leathers round his ankles he would not
get them off quite as easy as we have done."

"And what then?"

"Well, he would tell us where we are, and what is to be done with us."

"Pshaw! what does it matter since our mission is done?"

"It may not matter to you--there's no accounting for tastes--but it
matters a good deal to me. I'm not used to sitting in a hole, like a
bear in a trap, waiting for what other folks choose to do with me.
It's new to me. I found Paris a pretty close sort of place, but it's a
prairie compared to this. It don't suit a man of my habits, and I am
going to come out of it."

"There's no help but patience, my friend."

"I don't know that. I'd get more help out of a bar and a few pegs."
He opened his coat, and took out a short piece of rusted iron, and three
small thick pieces of wood, sharpened at one end.

"Where did you get those, then?"

"These are my night's work. The bar is the top one of the grate. I had
a job to loosen it, but there it is. The pegs I whittled out of that
log."

"And what are they for?"

"Well, you see, peg number one goes in here, where I have picked a hole
between the stones. Then I've made this other log into a mallet, and
with two cracks there it is firm fixed, so that you can put your weight
on it. Now these two go in th