"Lordy! Preserve us agin you greedy women!" cried Knapps. "I reckon you'd make soup out o' stones an' sell it for ten cents a pint if you dared." "Come along, Commodore," said Stark, "we'll try Mrs. Luscombe at the next stall. Lovey Lee's too grasping." At that moment William Burnham approached and saw the fowls. "Just what I want," he exclaimed. "Poor Matthew Mercer is still alive; but he can't eat any victuals, so we'll make some chicken broth for him. What's your price, Mrs. Lee?" Lovey glanced at Stark, and, seeing that he was not concerned, understood that she might sell safely. "Half-a-crown, an' I'd sooner fling 'em into the Moor for the foxes than take a penny less," she said. Commodore Miller turned to a sentry and asked the market value of fowls. The man did not know, but a turnkey passing at that moment answered him. "Fowls are tenpence each--eighteen pence a pair to-day," he said. Whereupon Lovey called down lightning upon his head, and behaved with such impropriety that the man turned round in a rage and threatened to have her removed out of the markets. Upon this she relapsed into sulky silence, and presently, after some haggling, took the money that was her due, and almost flung the fowls at Burnham. Anon Mr. Cuffee departed with the poultry under his arm, and, guessing what to expect, he made a careful examination. A few words much to the point were scrawled upon paper and packed within one bird. Lovey Lee had written an answer to Stark's invitation. "_Right. Tell me what you want and what you'll give. Put message in a chaw of baccy next week._" CHAPTER III THE GREEN APPLE It sometimes happened that at those hours when the guard was being changed, seconds and even minutes passed, during which a sentry-box might be empty and a section of the inner wall remain unguarded. It was proposed by the Seven to avail themselves of such a moment in the dusky evening hour before all prisoners were called upon to leave the exercise yard and pass behind locked doors. Between the inner and outer walls of the prison extended a space or patrol ground of ten yards in breadth; but while the inner wall offered no special difficulties, as the sentries' staircases were built into the side of it, the second wall presented a harder problem. By climbing upon each other's shoulders like acrobats it was hoped to scale it, but since the message from the miser, this plan was abandoned in favour of mechanical means. For necessary apparatus the conspirators looked to Lovey Lee. Her businesslike reply to Stark promised well. "We must give her more to help us out than the authorities would give her to reveal our plans," explained Commodore Miller. "She would get but three pounds a head for us if she turned traitor. Let her have ten pounds a head to free us and all will probably be done that she can do. Lovey Lee sells herself to the highest bidder. Her only steadfast principle is dollars."