"I don't know," protested Slater, whose mountain of flesh seemed quivering like jelly. "It's not a minute ago since I went to get my keys, and they was all inside their cells when I went down." "Who let them out, then?" The Major glared at him, incredulity in every line of his countenance. "I don't know. I'll swear it wasn't me!" "I suppose they let themselves out, then. You men!" Although this short dialogue had been conducted by no means _sotto-voce_, the noise did not seem to have had the slightest effect in rousing the prisoners out of slumber. Even when the Major called to them they gave no sign. "You men!" he shouted again; "it's no good shamming Abraham with me!" He stooped to shake the man who was lying on the plank at his feet. "Good--good God! The--the--man's not dead?" "Dead!" cried the governor, kneeling by the Major's side upon the stones. The sleeper was very still. He was a man of some forty years of age, with nut-brown tangled hair and beard. If not a short-sentence man he was still in the early stages of his term--for he lay on the bare boards of the plank with the rug, blanket, and sheet wrapped closely round him, so that they might take, as far as possible, the place of the coir mattress, which was not there. The bed was not a bed of comfort, yet his sleep was sound--strangely sound. If he breathed at all, it was so lightly as to be inaudible. On his face was that dazed, strained expression which we sometimes see on the faces of those who, without a moment's warning, have been suddenly visited by death. "I don't think he's dead," the governor said. "He seems to be in some sort of trance. What's the man's name?" "'Itchcock. He's one of the 'oppickers. He's got a month." It was Warder Slater who gave the information. The governor took the man by the shoulder, and tried to rouse him out of sleep. "Hitchcock! Hitchcock! Come, wake up, my man! It's all right; he's coming to--he's waking up." He did wake up, and that so suddenly as to take the party by surprise. He sprang upright on the plank, nothing on but an attenuated prison shirt, and glared at the officials with looks of unmistakable surprise. "Holloa! What's up! What's the meaning of this?" Major Hardinge replied, suspicion peeping from his eyes: "That is what we want to know, and what we intend to know--what does it mean? Why aren't you in your cell?" The man seemed for the first time to perceive where he was. "Strike me lucky, if I ain't outside! Somebody must have took me out when I was asleep." Then, realising in whose presence he was--"I beg your pardon, sir, but someone's took me out." "The one who took you out took all the others too." The Major gave a side glance at Warder Slater. That intelligent officer seemed to be suffering agonies. The prisoner glanced along the corridor. "If all the blessed lot of 'em ain't out too!"