“The soldiers had leaped from their horses as soon as the bailiff went down, and both together they seized Wilfrid and overthrew and bound him fast. Then, lashing him on the back of a horse, they set out for Kimberley, with he of the broken nose riding close behind, shedding a stream of blood and furious oaths. The neighbor folk say that over and over again he swore that young Birkenhead should never leave Kimberley alive.” “By’r Lady!” I cried, “there’s naught to prevent him making good his threats. He is in command at Kimberley now that the Sheriff hath left for the North.” Cedric nodded sadly. “’Tis so. He dares not put him to death openly, but he may starve him in his cell and report that he died of a sickness. And if the Sheriff returns, I doubt of much betterment for one in Wilfrid’s plight. Thou knowest well that throughout England at this moment there are lying in dungeons, with chains on their limbs, full many honest men who are as innocent of any crime as thou or me.” “I know it well indeed. And of these there are many as to whom their very jailers know not the charge against them, for their accusers are long ago dead. ’Tis a hard world we live in, Cedric; but I see not how we may better it.” Cedric sprang up and faced me with high-held head and blazing eyes. “Sir Richard, if thou’lt help me, we _may_ better this hard world for one luckless man. It has come to me how we may take Wilfrid of Birkenhead from the very walls of Kimberley.” “Help thee? My word upon it, I _will_ help thee if it can be done at all. Say on.” “My thought is this,” answered Cedric quickly, whilst tears of joy sprang to his eyes at my hearty seconding, “one that came from Kimberley even as we talked at my father’s to-day hath told us that Wilfrid is confined not in the castle dungeons, since those are in some way concerned in the present changes, but in a strong room in the tower, some forty feet above the moat. The window is not barred, since the apartment was never meant to serve for prison; but the wall is sheer below it to the cliff that steeply slopes from thence to the moat. ‘Twould be sure death to fling one’s self down, since the rock at the base is after all too wide to be passed by a leap from the window. But with a stout rope now, and with friends on the farther side with horses not far off—” “But the sentries on the battlements would surely spy him as he descended.”