"Why, now I have Dame Fortune by the forelock, And if she 'scapes my grasp, the fault is mine." SCOTT, _Old Play._ "Fie! Fie! Have I nothing more pressing to attend to than to weep over these old tales?" cried Audrey, as she looked round the crowded shelves of the closet. "It were more to the point to decide what I am to do with all these treasures. Are they best here, or can I carry the papers at least with me? So much hangs on what awaits me to-morrow. If they let me go free I can tell Mistress Joyce of my discovery, and she will let me have a cart to carry off my plunder! But if they clap me into jail? Good faith, I'll give them some trouble first! Who knows but I might make shift to escape on the road! For that matter, why do I sit mewed up here without making an offer to escape? This dear house is no prison that I should find no way out of it! How did distressed damsels do in the tale books? Methinks the favourite fashion was to make ropes out of the bed sheets. But I should be loath to tear up Mistress Joyce's best linen, and I am not well assured that I could climb down a rope even could I make it. That plan is naught! But I warrant some of these keys will undo the chamber door, and then it is but a small matter to slip downstairs and out of the hall door. But, good lack! if the bolts are as stiff as they used to be, the mighty creaking of them would awake the seven sleepers, and I should look a pretty fool, caught like a schoolboy breaking bounds! Yet forth I must, and will go! I may at least see if the chamber door can be fitted with a key. I suppose there are no more secret doors in this room to match this closet? After so many wonders, I am fit to believe Tom Tit Tot will unlock another panel and let me out! Stay. If this were indeed a priest's hole, surely they would have some fashion of escape if they were close pressed? I am sure grandfather has told me these chambers often led into a very maze of secret ways. Oh, you fool," she almost screamed, "to stand in the very draught of a sliding door and not see the chink! Down on your knees and thank the Lord who hath delivered you from prison as truly as He did Peter!" It was true. In the back of the closet was a sliding panel that was actually partly open, only in the hurry and excitement of so many discoveries she had not paused to look for the origin of the draught that made her candle flicker. She pushed the panel cautiously, fearing that some dismal creak might awaken the house, but the woodwork was carefully fitted and the door slid back without a sound. Before her a corkscrew staircase wound down in the thickness of the wall. Carefully she stepped through the door, but the stair was of solid stone, and her light foot made no sound on it as she ran down. The bottom of the stair was guarded by a narrow door, locked and barred.