In some colossal work of Michael Angelo's I have seen a tremendous figure so contorted, writhing in supreme effort. The mortar broke, some of the stones gave way at length, and one bar of the grating was wrenched reluctant from its anchorage in the wall below. Then, letting the crowbar fall, Bob seized the rod now loosened at one end and tore it quite out, and then threw it from him in a kind of fury. The process had to be repeated with each separate bar in the grating, though the breaking up of the wall about the window made each rod come more easily than the preceding one. When all had been removed he squeezed through the window-opening, feet first, and felt his way down the passage to the door of the dungeon, where Tom was anxiously waiting for his deliverer. Bob made what a surgeon would call a "digital examination" of the dungeon door, and found its strength to be such that to break it down would require the rest of the night, if, indeed, there was any hope of achieving it at all in a dark hall-way, too narrow to admit of a free use of the crowbar. "Dern the luck!" said Bob, pausing a moment. "What's the matter, Bob?" asked Tom anxiously. But Bob did not seem to hear the question. "We must git a cole-chisel," was all he said; and he hastened to creep back out of the broken-up window. "Whach yeh go'n' to do?" asked the waiting Zeke, as Bob emerged. But Bob only said, "Come on, quick!" and started off in a swinging trot toward the village blacksmith shop, a low, longish, wooden building, barely visible in the darkness. He pulled at the door, but it was firmly closed with a padlock. Then he felt his way along the side of the building to a window-sash, which was easily taken out of its place. "Heap uh use uh lockin' the door," he muttered, as he climbed in. "Blow up the belluses there un see ef you kin make a light." Zeke, who had followed his leader, pumped away on the bellows in vain, for the fire in the forge had quite gone out, though the ashes were hot to Zeke's touch. Both of the men set to work to find a blacksmith's cold-chisel, feeling and fumbling all over the disorderly shop. As it often took the smith half an hour to find this particular tool, it would have been a marvel for two strangers to find it at all in the darkness. "We'll have to gin up the c'nundrum," said Bob, with his hands again in his pockets. "Didn' you say as you 'lowed the sher'f was expectin' Jake?" "Yes," answered Zeke. "Jake's got a kind-uv a secret urrangement weth Plunkett's brother-in-law. They hain't to be shootin'-work on nary side, but on'y jist a-plenty uv thunderin' loud talk fer the looks uv the thing. Jake's to make the derndest kind uv a row, un the sher'f's to talk about dyin' 'n 'is tracks un all that, you know. That 's some weeks ago't the sher'f s brother-in-law fixed all that up, un Jake, he tole us they wouldn' be no danger."