"They told you lies, then. I've been very well treated, but what troubles me is I can't find out where any of our comrades have gone to." "I can tell only of one. Molloy is alive. I wish I could say he's well. Of the others I'm as ignorant as yourself. But I've seen a friend who--" At this point he was interrupted by the interpreter and told to move on, which he was fain to do with a cheery good-bye to Moses and a wave of the hand. Arrived at the prison, he found that Molloy had been removed to a more comfortable room, into which he was also ushered, and there they were left alone together. "D'you feel better now, my poor fellow?" asked Miles, when the door was shut. "Better, bless you, yes! I feels far too well. They've given me a rare blow-out of beans an' oil since you were taken off to be hanged, and I feels so strong that the next turn off won't finish me! I could never have eaten 'em, thinkin' of you, but, d'ee know, I was quite sure, from the way they treated you as you went out, that it warn't to be hangin' wi' you this time. An' when they putt me into this here room, an' produced the beans an' oil, I began to feel quite easy in my mind about you. It was the man that brought your marchin' orders that told 'em to putt me here. D'ee know, lad, I can't help feelin' that a friend o' some sort must have bin raised up to us." "You're right, Jack, I have just seen the Arab whose life I saved, and who saved yours! It's very strange, too, that beans and oil should have been your fare to-day, for I have also seen Moses Pyne in the street, not half-an-hour since, cooking and selling beans and oil!" "You don't mean that?" "Indeed I do. I've spoken to him." Sitting down on a stool--for they were promoted to a furnished apartment--Miles entered into an elaborate account of all that had befallen him since the hour that he had been taken out, as they both thought, to be hanged! CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. IN WHICH HOPES AND FEARS RISE AND FALL. "There is a tide in the affairs of men," undoubtedly, and the tide in the affairs of Miles Milton and his comrades appeared to have reached low-water at this time, for, on the day mentioned in the last chapter, it began to turn, and continued for a considerable time to rise. The first clear evidence of the change was the "blow-out" of beans and oil, coupled with the change of prison. The next was the sudden appearance of the beans-and-oil-man himself. "Why, I do believe--it's--it's Moses," exclaimed Molloy, as his old comrade entered the prison. "Give us your flipper. Man alive! but I'm right glad to see you. We thought you was--let's have a look at your neck. No; nothing there. I knowed as that interpreter was a liar. But what brings you _here_, lad? What mischief have 'ee bin up to?"