It was a little miserable leaden
pipe. I beat all round the walls, praying for some secret door, but
there was nothing of any use to me, only a little iron ventilator high
up, big enough to take my head, but nothing more. As for the skylight
over the bath, it was beyond my reach, high up. For the moment I could
see no means of getting to it. I went back to the dining room to give
another useless pounding to the door. My head was full of miserable
forebodings; but as yet I suspected merely that I had been caught by
some sudden advance of militia. Or perhaps the squire had laid plans
to get information from one who knew the Duke. Perhaps I had been lured
away specially by one hungry for the King's good opinion. Or could it be
Aurelia? Whatever it was, I was trapped, that was the terrible thing. I
was shut up there till my enemy, whoever it was, chose to deal with me.
I was in arms against the ruling King of England; everybody's hand would
be against me, unless my own hands helped me before my enemies came.
My first thought was to get the table down the steps, to make a bridge
across the bath, from which I could reach the skylight. This I could not
do at first; for being much flustered, I did not put the table-leaves
down. Until I knocked them down in my hurry they kept me from dragging
the table from the dining room. When I got it at last into the
bath-room, I found that it would not stretch across the water: the legs
were too close together, as I might have seen had I kept my wits about
me. I could think of no other way of getting out.

I went back disheartened to the dining room, dragging my coat behind
me. The first thing which I saw was a letter addressed to me in a hand
already known to me. The letter lay on the floor on the space once
covered by the table. As it had not been there when I dragged the table
downstairs, someone must have entered the room while I was away. I
opened the letter in a good deal of flurry. It ran as follows:

"Dear Martin Hyde:--As you will not take a sincere friend's advice, you
have to make the best of a sincere adviser's friendship. You did me a
great service. Let me do you one. I hope to keep you an amused prisoner
until your captain is a beaten man. By about three weeks from this 26th
of June we shall hope to have made you so much our friend that you will
not think of leaving us. May I make a compact with you? Please do not
shoot me with that pistol of yours when I bring you some suppe