It would be an injustice to him, however, to those inherent qualities and rare abilities which had made him what he was, to neglect depicting his movements during the time his captors were so pressingly engaged with Patsy. Of Chick and Patsy’s discoveries and designs since he parted from them at the Adams House that morning, Nick, of course, was entirely ignorant. That they had so quickly suspected something wrong because of his absence, or that he could depend upon them for any immediate assistance, he did not for a moment imagine. For it was then only a few hours after the time they had agreed to meet, and any ordinary incident might have detained him that long. Yet Amos Badger had no sooner closed the door of the wine-vault than Nick Carter began to think about making his escape. “Whatever I accomplish,” he said to himself, “I must accomplish alone. There is not much chance that Chick and Patsy have yet discovered any clue to my whereabouts, even if they now suspect that I have met with some beastly mishap, so I must figure upon playing a lone hand in getting out of this place. I’ll make the attempt, at least, and if——Hello! what’s the meaning of that, I wonder?” From some quarter outside, borne faintly to his ears, had come the furious barking of a dog, mingled with the shouts of men and the screams of women. For half a minute Nick listened intently, but the startling sounds were not prolonged, and presently only silence reigned in the wine-vault. Stop a bit—not quite silence only! From one corner came a faint noise which Nick’s ear was quick to detect. It was the steady drip, drip, drip of water, from some point higher than the floor. Nick recalled seeing a stagnant pool in the corner from which the dripping sounded, and he rightly inferred that there must be some water-supply above, possibly in the stable, and that a considerable leak existed. “My first work must be that of getting my hands at liberty,” he soliloquized, after a few moments. They were tied behind him, but that mattered little to Nick Carter. While the lantern was in the vault, during his talk with Badger, Nick had visually examined the surrounding stone walls, and had discovered several places where the rough corners of the stones protruded a little, forming tolerably sharp edges. Against one of these he backed, after rising to his feet with some difficulty, until he could bring the rope about his wrists to bear against the edge of the stone. Then he began sawing it up and down, at an expense of some little skin from his knuckles, and at the end of five minutes he felt one of the strands give and break. Then, with a mighty effort, he succeeded in breaking the entire rope, and the liberation of his hands at once became easy. “Now, if you come down here, Badger, you’ll meet with a warmer reception than before,” he determinedly muttered, while he set to work at the ropes around his ankles.