All this took some time, and I required the help of Miss Stennis at every step. I fear some nights the young lady did not get much sleep, for every particle of debris--stone, lime, sawdust--had to be conveyed through the narrow holes made for the leg bolts, then taken up in the palms of her hands and conveyed to the little trapdoor behind her bed beneath which was the flowing water. It was not much of an operation on my side--rough work, ill done--and had any man in my employ tried to pass off such workmanship on me, I should have showed him round the yard with the point of my boot--ay, and out at the front gate, too! Still, it was done, which was the main thing. And after I had bethought me to widen the two bolt holes by making them one--all, that is, except the pieces of wood which hid the tunnel on either side--the work went on much faster. You see, I was always in fear of Mad Jeremy or somebody coming to search. But, as a matter of fact, nobody looked near me, and on Elsie's side she was protected by the dark cupboard. Still, it was better to leave nothing to chance, and to treat Mad Jeremy, with his wild eyes and insane freaks, as if he had been the most suspicious of jailers. But any one who gives the matter a thought will see in what a humiliating position I was placed, utterly forgotten, as it seemed, even by those who had taken possession of my cheque in order to compel me to sign it. Was it possible, I asked myself, that they had found some one to forge my signature, negotiated it at a distance, and fled with the proceeds? Of Mad Jeremy I still had news. For at intervals he supplied Miss Stennis with food, sometimes days old, for it was but seldom that he baked now; and though the weather was milder without, both Elsie's cell and mine became much less comfortable, though not, so far as I could observe, damp. It was evidently a period of great excitement with the lunatic who had constituted himself our caretaker. Putting my ear to the excavation, I could hear him whistling and singing while he was in the chamber behind the oven talking to Elsie. Once I heard him. playing upon some instrument, which sounded like the bagpipes, but was in reality his precious fiddle. And I will say that I lay and gripped my nails into my hands in impotent anger to think that there was, according to my most accurate measurements, at least a foot of stone and lime, laid with burned shell and sand as only the old monks knew how, all to pick out piecemeal with the point of my weapon before I could be of the slightest use to the young lady in the case of an attack. Once it was evident that Jeremy had been listening at the door. He opened upon me suddenly and demanded what was that knocking he had heard? I answered that I was trying to attract attention to the fact that I had been several days without either food or water. He looked at me suspiciously, and said-- "It sounded more like somebody beating a tune!"