ilization.

Satisfied, at length, from what she heard, that the two so confined were
friendly, she contrived to make them understand her contiguity, by
speaking in tones sufficiently low as to be unheard beyond the apartment
in which they were. In this way she was enabled to converse with the
pedler, to whom all her difficulties were suggested, and to whom she did
not hesitate to say that she knew that which would not fail to save the
life of Colleton.

Bunce was not slow to devise various measures for the further promotion
of the scheme, none of which, however, served the purpose of showing to
either party how they should get out, and, but for the idiot, it is more
than probable, despairing of success, they would at length have thrown
aside the hope of doing anything for the youth as perfectly illusory.

But Chub came in as a prime auxiliar. From the first moment in which he
heard the gentle tones of Lucy's voice, he had busied himself with his
long nails and fingers in removing the various masses of clay which had
been made to fill up sundry crevices of the intervening wall, and had so
far succeeded as to detach a large square of the rock itself, which,
with all possible pains and caution, he lifted from the embrasure. This
done, he could distinguish objects, though dimly, from one apartment in
the other, and thus introduced the parties to a somewhat nearer
acquaintance with one another. Having done so much, he reposed from his
labors, content with a sight of Lucy, on whom he continued to gaze with
a fixed and stupid admiration.

He had pursued this work so noiselessly, and the maiden and Bunce had
been so busily employed in discussing their several plans, that they had
not observed the vast progress which Chub had made toward furnishing
them with a better solution of their difficulties than any of their own
previous cogitations. When Bunce saw how much had been done in one
quarter, he applied himself resolutely to similar experiments on the
opposite wall: and had the satisfaction of discovering that, as a
dungeon, the dwelling in which they were required to remain was sadly
deficient in some few of the requisites of security. With the aid of a
small pick of iron, which Lucy handed him from her cell, he pierced the
outer wall in several places, in which the clay had been required to do
the offices of the rock, and had the satisfaction of perceiving, from
the sudden influx of light in the apartment, succeeding his a