iety of his
faithful friends the beleaguered one passed a comfortable night. There
are some men who could not live under this excitement, but Strong was a
brave man, as we have said, who had seen service and never lost heart in
peril.

But besides allies, our general had secured for himself, under
difficulties, that still more necessary aid, a retreat. It has been
mentioned in a former part of this history, how Messrs. Costigan and
Bows lived in the house next door to Captain Strong, and that the window
of one of their rooms was not very far off the kitchen-window which was
situated in the upper story of Strong's chambers. A leaden water-pipe
and gutter served for the two; and Strong, looking out from his kitchen
one day, saw that he could spring with great ease up to the sill of his
neighbour's window, and clamber up the pipe which communicated from one
to the other. He had laughingly shown this refuge to his chum, Altamont;
and they had agreed that it would be as well not to mention the
circumstance to Captain Costigan, whose duns were numerous, and who
would be constantly flying down the pipe into their apartments if this
way of escape were shown to him.

But now that the evil days were come, Strong made use of the passage,
and one afternoon burst in upon Bows and Costigan with his jolly face,
and explained that the enemy was in waiting on his staircase, and that
he had taken this means of giving them the slip. So while Mr. Marks's
aides-de-camp were in waiting in the passage of No. 3, Strong walked
down the steps of No. 4, dined at the Albion, went to the play, and
returned home at midnight, to the astonishment of Mrs. Bolton and Fanny,
who had not seen him quit his chambers and could not conceive how he
could have passed the line of sentries.

Strong bore this siege for some weeks with admirable spirit and
resolution, and as only such an old and brave soldier would, for the
pains and privations which he had to endure were enough to depress any
man of ordinary courage; and what vexed and riled him (to use his own
expression) was the infernal indifference and cowardly ingratitude of
Clavering, to whom he wrote letter after letter, which the Baronet never
acknowledged by a single word, or by the smallest remittance, though a
five-pound note, as Strong said, at that time would have been a fortune
to him.

But better days were in store for the Chevalier, and in the midst of his
despondency and perplexities there ca