It was about this time that the truth as to the manner in which I was attached to the wall flashed upon me. I could see it all now, and wondered how I had not understood it before. I have already explained that the rings to which my ankles were attached ended in round rods or bolts that passed through the wall. But the bolts turned easily with every movement of my body, instead of being (as one would have expected) firmed into the thickness of the wall. Now it was all clear as an invoice. The bolts passed right through into the chamber occupied by Elsie, and were there attached either to other similar rings or held in place by a crossbar of some sort. I used the code--my foolish thought for Joe, now so useful--to ask the girl if she could see anything at the place upon which I knocked with my feet. She replied that it was impossible, because in that place there was a deep cupboard of which she had not got the key. Now, I know the locks of cupboard doors. I sell them. And the fact is that most of them are worthless as fastenings, except perhaps a few like the one in Miss Elsie's room, which had been planned by the monks some hundred years ago. But even so, the lock would almost certainly have had to be renewed--probably quite recently--in view of the use to which the underground passages and cellars were to be put. I therefore "knocked" a message through to Elsie to secrete a stout knife. She had it already. I might have expected as much of her. Then I told her how to slide the blade of the knife with its back downward into the crack of the door. The supple bend of the knife blade, taking the shape of the bolt, would in all probability after a little trial cause it to slide back easily. After a little Elsie succeeded. The bolt, as I expected, was a biased one, not square on the face, and hardly caught into the bolt hole at all. It had come from my own shop, and I knew its capabilities. They make them by the hundred gross, all as like as peas, and just sufficiently strong to keep out the cat. But mostly, if people think a place is locked, it _is_ locked--especially women. I could hardly wait the reply, after Elsie had been into the deep cupboard. It was all I could hope for. The bolts came through into the cupboard about three feet from the floor, which showed that my chamber was higher than hers; they were caught by iron linch-pins in the same way that an axle of a red farm cart is fastened on to the outside of the hub. "Could Elsie knock them out, did she think?" Elsie thought she could, but she would need something heavy--like a bar of iron. She had it--the handle of the broken rake that had been used in the oven furnace. So the first thing after supper and the departure of her visitors, Elsie knocked out the pins. I drew out the bolts on my side, and was free to move about--with, it is true, the rings and bolts jangling about my ankles. Still, in part I was free, and my heart rose within me.