“You'll carry me in your awms, as a father beareth his children....” “You are cool! What are you in for?” “Murder, my son-red, grim, gory murder!” “Guilty?” “Guilty, ya'as. What do _you_ think?” “Then you may go to hell”. “_'Ell_ is it? I'm _there_: and if I linger longer loo in it, you linger, too, swelp me Gawd!” Hogarth was nonplussed. “But the foot...” “Never mind the _foot_. Foot's still good for a run. Do we go shares?” “Come along, then”. “But you ain't 'alf up to snuff, I can see, though you are pretty smart in your own way: I'd 'ave felt the confidence of a son in you, if you 'adn't overlooked that wine--” To Hogarth's dismay, he turned back to the table, put a black bottle, half full, to his lips, and with tilts anc stoppages set to gulp it, while eager jokes, touched with jealousy, began to jeer from the beds. “Lawd Gawd, that was good!” said the Cockney with upturned eyes, “and what do I behold?--broth, ye gawds!” Now a saucepan of cold broth was at his lips; and not till he had drunk all did he run after Hogarth into the other arm of the ward, where one of the keys unlocked the door at its end, and they passed out into the infirmary exercise-hall, now dark, Hogarth dragging the Cockney, who limped, and kept up a prattle of tipsy ribaldries. Then, emerging upon a platform of slabs, from which the jump into the infirmary exercise-yard is twenty feet, Hogarth leapt. The Cockney stood hesitating on the brink. “As sure as my name's 'Arris, you'll be the bloomin' ruin of me...” he said aloud. “_Sh-h-h_”, went Hogarth, “one more word, and I leave or knock you speechless”. Now at last Harris jumped, Hogarth catching him, and they ran across the yard northerly, Harris complaining of cold, being in hospital flannels, his feet bare, Hogarth bitterly regretting the burden of this companion, meditating on deserting him. Accordingly, when they had run down a passage, and were confronted by a great gate, spiked a-top, Hogarth said: “I'll get up first”, and, forcing the small end of the truncheon into the space at the hinges, he got foot-hold from which he caught the top hinge and scaled, a feat of which he considered Harris incapable; and, instead of helping him up, leapt down with a new feeling of lightness, hearing from the other side “Dastardly treachery...!” Again he ran through dark night wild with winds wheeling snowflakes; and, seeing in the unpaved court in which he now was a clothes-line supported on stakes, he seized both, to run with them to where the court is bounded by the great outer wall: for though it is thirty feet of sheer rock, the mere fact of stakes being found there, and of a vanished rope, would furnish grounds for the belief that he had scaled it: he therefore leant the stakes against it, and kept the rope. About to turn, he felt his back touched; and, spinning round, saw Harris panting.