It was almost inevitable that, with so many preparations in progress, the secret of our intentions should leak out in the camp; and once suspicions were aroused many of our actions would go to confirm them. Thus it came about that a few days before the 30th July, the whole of the camp at Yozgad knew pretty well that attempts to escape were on foot; the shopping lists for the Changri division were alone enough to have set people talking. Everybody wanted bootlaces, straps, hobnails, rope, &c., in prodigious quantities. Unfortunately the Turks also appeared to have got wind of it. For the last week of July, sentries were visited and awakened with unheard-of frequency. Even the commandant himself occasionally visited the different houses after dark. In the case of one house, an extra sentry was suddenly posted in the garden. However, our preparations went quietly on; our "hosts" might have nothing really definite to go upon, and the more keen the sentries were now, the more weary they would be by the time the real day arrived. We therefore continued to make holes in walls, loosen iron bars, dig unnecessary irrigation channels in the garden, &c., &c., all as aids to egress from one house or another on the final night. In the particular house of our original six, (Cochrane and Ellis lived in another), we had come to the conclusion that our best chance was to prepare a hole through the outer wall of the kitchen belonging to our mess. This kitchen, it is necessary to explain, was built along the high enclosure wall of the garden, and was separated from the house itself by a narrow alley-way, over which one of the sentries stood guard. Next to the kitchen in the same outhouse was a little room with one small window opening on to the alley, the entrance being _viâ_ the kitchen itself. This second room was used as a fowl-house, and it was here that we made up our minds to prepare a hole three-quarters of the way through the outer wall. How exactly those escaping from our house were to get across into the kitchen and finish off the hole on the final night was a problem of which the solution was only settled in detail at the last moment, and we will therefore leave our readers in a similar state of suspense. The essential was that all should be present at the evening roll-call, and yet the hole must be completed and everybody be across at precisely 9.15 P.M. So uncertain were we of the means of effecting this that we had a second alternative in case the first scheme could not be carried out. This involved getting over the wall by ladders.