hour he had worked a good hole, and was able to refresh himself with the largeness of the outer world. Not that he could, however skilled now in rolling, roll himself out of his black jail yet--for the piece punched out was only four inches wide--but that he got a very decent width (in proportion at least to man's average view) for clear consideration of the world outside. And what he saw now was a pretty little sight, or peep at country scenery. For the wood, just here, was not so thick that a man could not see it by reason of the trees--as the Irishman forcibly observed--but a dotted slope of bush and timber widening and opening sunny reaches out of the narrow forest track. There was no house to be seen, nor cottage, nor even barn or stable, nor any moving creature, except a pig or two grouting in the tufted grass, and gray-headed daws at leisure perking and prying, for the good of their home-circle. But presently the prisoner espied a wicket-gate, nearly at the bottom of the sylvan slope, with a little space roughly stoned before it--almost a sure sign, in a neighbourhood like that, of a human dwelling-place inside. And when Hardenow's eyes, recovering tone, assured him of the existence of some moss-grown steps, for the climbing of a horse upon either side, he felt a sudden (though it may not have been a strictly logical) happiness, from the warm idea that there must be some of the human race not far from him. He placed his lips close to the hole which he had made, and shouted his very loudest, and then stopped a little while, to watch what might come of it, and then sent forth another shout. But nothing came of it, except that the pigs pricked up their ears and looked around and grunted; and the jackdaws gave a little jerk or two, and flapped their wings, but did not fly; and a soft woody echo, of a fibrous texture, answered as weakly as a boy who does not know. This was pretty much what Hardenow expected. He saw that the wicket-gate was a long way off, three or four hundred yards perhaps; but he did not know that his jailer, Tickuss Cripps, was the man who lived inside of it. Otherwise his sagacious mind would have yielded quiet mercy to his lungs. For Leviticus was such a cruel and cowardly blunderer, that, in mere terror, he probably would have dashed grand brains out. But luckily he was far away now, and so were all other spies and villains; and only a little child--boy or girl, at that distance nobody could say which--toddled out to the wicket-gate, and laid fat arms against it, and laboured, with impatient grunts, to push it open. Having seen no one for a long time now, Hardenow took an extraordinary interest in the efforts of this child. The success or the failure of this little atom could not in any way matter to him; yet he threw his whole power of sight into the strain of the distant conflict. He made up his mind that if the child got out, he should be able to do the like.