When they mounted into the empty attic they found the window invitingly open, and, after waiting a few minutes to humor the moon, the soldier volunteered to reconnoiter. He reached the ridge without the slightest difficulty, and crawled along till he could see his way clear to the window they wished to attain. Then he returned undiscovered and reported progress. Now the first mistake was making a reconnaissance at all: _vestigia nulla retrorsum_, ought to have been the word that night, if ever. The second and graver error was, allowing the parson to go first, when they started in earnest. The light, lithe body of the soldier could glide over the roof with the silent swiftness of a cat "on the rampage;" the same animal, shod with walnut-shells, suggests itself as an apt, though irreverent comparison for the priestly fugitive. To use the narrator's own words--occasionally more forcible than elegant: "You might have heard him two blocks off, squattering and spluttering over the shingles." Those miserable machines, when put to the proof, made more noise than even we had imputed to them. The prisoners over whose heads the parson passed, heard the slipping and scratching quite plainly, though the attic floor was between them. Nevertheless he had time to reach the desired window, to let it slip once with a resonant bang, and to slip inside out of sight, before any alarm was raised. But the drowsy or careless sentinel awoke to a sense of his position just as the second fugitive turned the first chimney-stack, and challenged with a threat of shooting. The Marylander knew that the game was up, as far as he was concerned; if he went on and escaped the bullet, those below would have seen at what window he entered, and the start was hopelessly short: to persist would only have insured two recaptures. He certainly did the wisest thing in retracing his way as speedily as possible. When the guards came to No. 22, they found its solitary inmate in bed, sleeping apparently the heavy, stertorous sleep of a deep drinker: an empty whisky-bottle gave a color of probability to the picture. They could get nothing out of him then; and, afterwards, he took the line of having been insensibly overcome by liquor, and so prevented from accompanying his fellow-prisoner. The authorities could scarcely have believed the story; but perhaps they wished to keep the escape as quiet as possible; at any rate the Marylander was not more strictly guarded or severely treated than before. He took the mishap with wonderful pluck and good-humor, and spoke rather humorously than wrathfully of the whole affair. Yet, as far as he knew, he had come back to indefinite captivity. When he went South with the rest of them on the 20th of May, no man of the five hundred better deserved freedom.