Even in the loft I was not much better off. There was a heap of hay and a few bundles of straw lying at one end, and two great swing-doors, opening on to the courtyard, through which the hay and straw had been passed to shelter. It was plainly useless to lie down in the straw. That would be the first place searched. I should be caught at once if I hid among the straw. Then it occurred to me that the loft must lead to a pigeon-house. I had seen a pigeon-house above and at one end of the stable, and I judged that the loft would communicate with it. It was not very light, but, by groping along the end wall, I came to a little latched door leading to another little room. This was the pigeon-house, and as I burst into it, closing the door behind me, the many pigeons rustled and stirred upon their nests and perches. It was darker in the pigeon-house than in the loft, but I could see that the place was bigger than the loft itself, and this gave me hope that there would be an opening at the back of it away from the yard. I had not much time, I knew, because the troopers were already trying to open the stable-door below me. I could hear them pounding and grumbling. Just as I heard them say, "That's it. The bar lifts up. There you are"--showing that they had found how to open the door--I came to a little door at the back, a little rotten door, locked and bolted with rusty cobwebbed iron. Very cautiously I turned the lock and drew the bolts back. The latch creaked under my thumb for the first time in many years. I was outside the door on a little, rotten, wooden landing, from which a flight of wooden steps led downward. I saw beyond me a few farm-buildings, a byre, several pigsties, and three disused waggons. Voices sounded in the stable as I climbed down the steps. I heard a man say, "He might be in the loft. We might look there." And then I touched the ground, and scurried quickly past the shelters to the outer wall. Happily for me, the wall was well-grown with ivy, so that I could climb to the top. There was a six-foot drop on the far side into a lane; but it was now neck or nothing, so I let myself go. I came down with a crack which made my teeth rattle, my parcel spun away into a bed of nettles, and I got well stung in fishing it out. Then I strapped it on my back and turned along the lane in the direction which (as I judged) led me away from the sea. As I stepped out on my adventures, I heard the ordered trample of horses leaving the inn-yard together to seek elsewhere. The lane soon ended at a stile, which led into a field. I saw a barn or shed just beyond the stile, and in the shed there was a heap of hay, which smelt a little mouldy. I lay down upon it, determined to wake early, and creep back to the inn before anybody stirred in the village. "Ah, well," I said to myself before I fell asleep, "in a week's time they will be here to take me home. Then my troubles will be over."