Geoffrey read the letter many times before he turned to his miserable supper of dry bread and cocoa. He impressed every detail on his mind so that the writing might be destroyed. Then he began to eat and think together, and it was nearly morning before the thinking ceased. In his mind he must settle every difficulty, foresee and circumvent every danger before he made a move. Were it only his own peril he were considering he would have had small anxiety. But now he felt on himself the burden of the lives of his three friends, who would undoubtedly attempt to carry out his arrangements. At last he fell asleep, and it seemed that the vile roar of the waking bell began a few minutes later. In the morning Geoffrey sat face to face with the first and least of his difficulties: he had no means of writing to his unknown friends. But the mind springs to experiment when it is left alone. In a minute he had paper, pen, and ink, and, stretched on the floor, with his only book, the prison Bible, for a desk, he was writing his answer. The ink was on the floor, composed of the asphalt dust of which the floor was made. He had swept it into a little heap with his hard floor-brush, and mixed it with water from his washing basin. His pen was the wire-twisted end of his leathern boot-lace; and his paper, whole leaves carefully torn from the Bible, across the small type of which he wrote in heavy letters as follows: "We cannot possibly escape from within the prison. Our cells are on the third tier, opening into the prison, and two of our friends are old and infirm. We must escape from the guards while employed outside the walls, conceal ourselves till night, and then follow your instructions. To-day we shall begin our preparations. We cannot tell how soon we may make the attempt, or how long we shall have to wait. Wednesdays and Saturdays are the only days on which it can be done; and we must wait for a very rainy or foggy evening on one of those days. The present weather is in our favor, so do not leave the cottage empty day or night for a few weeks." Geoffrey concealed his letter, ate his breakfast when the six o'clock bell rang, and the bolts of five hundred cells shot back by one mighty stroke of a steam piston-rod, he paraded with his companions, and the four were marched off to their work at the monument. Sydney and the Duke walked together in rear of Geoffrey and Featherstone. The Duke, in order to keep up with the regulation pace, secretly clung to Sydney's arm, which he dropped when the officer looked round and took again when the danger had passed. When they came to the tool-shed, the prisoners went in one by one for their tools, which were piled up and taken away day after day, by the same men in the same order. The portable steam-engine was to the left of the door. Geoffrey went straight to it, opened the furnace door, and left his letter.