They passed on. I waited a few minutes, putting two and two together, and suddenly it came to me. _I had the password at the tip of my tongue!_ Hastily arising, I stepped outside of the room. It was but a few yards to the bottom of the stairs, and I heard the sentry humming a snatch of a tune, and keeping time to it with the stamping of his feet in a sort of a jig. I was afraid that if I approached him the way that I had done before, he might look closer, so I made believe that I was carrying on the fag end of a conversation with some one, and answered an imaginary question with a laugh (a trifle forced, I must admit). "No, thanks," I said; "you gentlemen are too much for me. I must hasten. Eh?" (A pause.) "I shall be back by nine o'clock, but I must hurry." Then I charged up the steps as if the devil was after me. The grenadier had hardly time to salute me; and I rushed past the other two at the end of the causeway at the same pace. They made some remark after I had gone by, but I did not catch it. More leisurely I descended the steps on the outside of the wall, and crossed the little foot-bridge to where the last sentry stood. His musket barred my path, but it was a respectful attitude. "The word, sir?" he said, slurring the usual challenge. "Defoe," I answered. He hesitated. "Daniel Defoe," I repeated, restraining with difficulty a mad impulse to close with him and pitch him headlong into the ditch. The response to this was a backward step on the sentry's part, and a stiff attitude of present arms. I replied with somewhat of a flourish, and hastened down the path. It led across a sort of common, bordered by twinkling lights shining from some vine-covered houses, and in the stillness I heard the sound of a fiddle played somewhere, and from another direction the voice of an infant crying at top lung. What was I to do? I had a good fund of general information, perhaps, owing to my reading, and I had made up by this time the hiatus caused by my being out of the world those two years at Belair; but I knew little or nothing of the geography of England, and to save my soul I could not have imagined which would be the best direction to take. My one idea was to put as much space between me and the prison-yard as I could, so I walked away from it with that end in view alone. It grew very dark, and I kept to the common until I plunged through a thorny hedge and made the road. It seemed to lead straight to the northward, which was as good for me as any other point of the compass, so I hastened along as fast as my legs could carry me. The big military hat wobbled unsteadily on my head, and I thought how difficult it would be to make any sort of a fight with such an encumbrance to quick motions. But I reasoned I would attract a great deal of attention if I should discard it, so I slung it over my back by the plume, ready to clap it on if necessary, and went forward at a dog-trot.