indow grating
was of iron, but he had too often assured himself of its solidity. All
his furniture consisted of a bed, a chair, a table, a pail, and a jug.
The bed had iron clamps, but they were screwed to the wood, and it would
have required a screw-driver to take them off. The table and chair
had nothing, the pail had once possessed a handle, but that had been
removed.

Dantes had but one resource, which was to break the jug, and with one of
the sharp fragments attack the wall. He let the jug fall on the floor,
and it broke in pieces.

Dantes concealed two or three of the sharpest fragments in his bed,
leaving the rest on the floor. The breaking of his jug was too natural
an accident to excite suspicion. Edmond had all the night to work in,
but in the darkness he could not do much, and he soon felt that he was
working against something very hard; he pushed back his bed, and waited
for day.

All night he heard the subterranean workman, who continued to mine his
way. Day came, the jailer entered. Dantes told him that the jug had
fallen from his hands while he was drinking, and the jailer went
grumblingly to fetch another, without giving himself the trouble to
remove the fragments of the broken one. He returned speedily, advised
the prisoner to be more careful, and departed.

Dantes heard joyfully the key grate in the lock; he listened until the
sound of steps died away, and then, hastily displacing his bed, saw
by the faint light that penetrated into his cell, that he had labored
uselessly the previous evening in attacking the stone instead of
removing the plaster that surrounded it.

The damp had rendered it friable, and Dantes was able to break it
off--in small morsels, it is true, but at the end of half an hour he had
scraped off a handful; a mathematician might have calculated that in
two years, supposing that the rock was not encountered, a passage twenty
feet long and two feet broad, might be formed.

The prisoner reproached himself with not having thus employed the hours
he had passed in vain hopes, prayer, and despondency. During the six
years that he had been imprisoned, what might he not have accomplished?

In three days he had succeeded, with the utmost precaution, in removing
the cement, and exposing the stone-work. The wall was built of rough
stones, among which, to give strength to the structure, blocks of hewn
stone were at intervals imbedded. It was one of these he had uncovered,
and which he mu