aving time to
devote to your fate. The soldiers will but have another instance of
the working of the Father of Evil, who hath long been thought to have a
weakness for that cell beneath us. Faith, if all we hear be true, there
have been horrors enough acted there to call up every devil out of the
pit. But time presses. Gently through the casement! So! Remember the
message.'

'Adieu, your Grace!' I answered, and seizing the rope slipped rapidly
and noiselessly to the ground, upon which he drew it up and closed the
casement. As I looked round, my eye fell upon the dark narrow slit which
opened into my cell, and through which honest Farmer Brown had held
converse with me. Half-an-hour ago I had been stretched upon the prison
pallet without a hope or a thought of escape. Now I was out in the open
with no hand to stay me, breathing the air of freedom with the prison
and the gallows cast off from me, as the waking man casts off his evil
dreams. Such changes shake a man's soul, my children. The heart that can
steel itself against death is softened by the assurance of safety. So
I have known a worthy trader bear up manfully when convinced that his
fortunes had been engulfed in the ocean, but lose all philosophy on
finding that the alarm was false, and that they had come safely through
the danger. For my own part, believing as I do that there is nothing of
chance in the affairs of this world, I felt that I had been exposed to
this trial in order to dispose me to serious thought, and that I had
been saved that I might put those thoughts into effect. As an earnest of
my endeavour to do so I knelt down on the green sward, in the shadow of
the Boteler turret, and I prayed that I might come to be of use on
the earth, and that I might be helped to rise above my own wants and
interests, to aid forward whatever of good or noble might be stirring in
my days. It is well-nigh fifty years, my dears, since I bowed my spirit
before the Great Unknown in the moon-tinted park of Badminton, but I
can truly say that from that day to this the aims which I laid down
for myself have served me as a compass over the dark waters of life--a
compass which I may perchance not always follow--for flesh is weak and
frail, but which hath, at least, been ever present, that I might turn to
it in seasons of doubt and of danger.

The path to the right led through groves and past carp ponds for a mile
or more, until I reached the line of trees which skirted the bou