Nevertheless it was so. The turnkey who visited the cell occupied by the young Mexican at eight o'clock on the morning after his arrest, found, to his bewilderment, that the dreary apartment was empty. The bars of the narrow window had been cut away, and a file, left upon the floor of the cell, told of patient labor which had occupied the prisoner in the silence of the night. A rope, one end of which was attached to the stump of one of the bars, also told of the mode of escape. One thing was sufficiently clear. Paul Lisimon had received assistance from without. He had been searched upon his entrance into the prison, and nothing of a suspicious character had been found about him; the file and rope had, therefore, been conveyed to him by some mysterious hand. The astonished officials of the jail looked from one to the other, not knowing what to suspect. The escape seemed almost incredible; for, in order to regain his liberty, the prisoner had not only to descend from the window of his cell, which was thirty feet above the prison yard, but he had also to scale the outer wall, which was upward of twenty feet high, and surmounted by a formidable chevaux de frise. How, then, had Paul Lisimon accomplished a feat hitherto unattempted by the most daring of criminals? None suspected the truth of the matter. None could guess at the real clew to the mystery! Paul Lisimon had neither descended from the window of his cell nor scaled the outer wall of the prison. He had walked out of the jail in the silence and darkness of the night, and in five minutes from leaving his cell had found himself in the streets of New Orleans. The person who had effected this miraculous escape was no other than the jailer, who had charge of Lisimon; and this jailer was one of the most trusted functionaries of the prison. Sir Robert Walpole said that every man has his price; this man had been richly bribed by a mysterious visitor, who had gained admission to the jail on the evening of Paul's arrest. The rope and file had been used in order to blind the governor of the prison to the real delinquent. At daybreak on the morning after his imprisonment Paul Lisimon found himself free in the streets of New Orleans, but utterly ignorant as to the mysterious being to whom he owed his release. The jailer had refused to give him any information about this person. "I know nothing of the business," the man said, "except that I am well paid for my share in it, and that I shall be a ruined man if I am found out." Paul Lisimon was free. He was free; but he stood alone in the world, without a friend--branded as a thief--cast off by the protector of his youth--an escaped felon! He hurried toward the lonely and deserted quay. Despair was in his heart, and he yearned to rest beneath the still waters of the Mississippi.