"'Well, at last, one day I had the thing finished; when midnight came I trembled like a leaf, till I began to fear I couldn't carry it through. I tore my shirt and the blanket in strips, to twist into a line, got out the bar by main force, squeezed through, and let myself down. The line was just long enough to let me swing against the cold wall, over a sentry's head going round the parapet below; as soon as he was past, I dropped on the edge of the wall, and fell along it, my fingers scraping the smooth stone to no purpose, till I was sliding off into the dark, with the river I didn't know how far below me, though I heard it lapping against some boats at the other side. "'For a few moments I was quite senseless from the fall into the water. The splash roused the sentinels, and three or four bullets whizzed into it about me, as I struck out for the shore. Still the night was thick enough to help me clear off among the dark lanes in the city; and the upshot of it was that I found out some royalists, who supplied me with a pedlar's dress; till, in the end, after I can't tell you how many ticklish chances, where my luck hung upon a hair, I reached the coast, and was taken off to a British frigate. At home, sir--at home, I found I'd been given up long ago for a dead man in Bonaparte's prisons, and--and--the old man had been buried seven years, Aldridge--but not so long as my--wife. The news of my taking my own life in the Temple saved her the rest--'twas too much for her at the time, Aldridge--both she and her little one had lain in the mould nine years, when I stood looking at the grass under Exeter Cathedral. I was a young man almost, still; but my hair was as grizzled when I got out of the Temple in 1813, as you see it now, and I'll never walk the deck fairly again. Aldridge,' added the captain of the _Podargus_, turning round and standing still, with a low sort of a deep whisper, ''tis a strange thing, the Almighty's way of working--but I never thought--in the Temple yonder, longing for a heave of the water under me--I I little thought John Wallis would ever come to keep guard over his Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon!'