The rajah, as it will have already been guessed, had discovered a secret way of leaving his palace. Starting from a well, or small chamber underneath his sleeping room, it led out through a long subterranean gallery to another well, most secretly contrived beyond the principal gate of the city. Ganesh, who had discovered it by accident, had made use of it to open communications with Dost Ah Khan. Believing that the rajah would accept the rebel chief's invitation to a conference, he had set everything in readiness for a departure this way. With regard to Tom's adventures on the perilous journey thus initiated I have been fortunate in securing narratives both by himself and his attendants. I have said that, in Gumilcund, he had given up recording the events of his daily life in his diary. No sooner had he left the State, regaining, as it seemed to him then, his old identity, than the necessity, which in some natures is so strong, of completing his life by throwing its incidents into a mental picture, reasserted itself. He wrote hurriedly day after day, on the tablets he carried with him, and as they, with the rest of his diary, have been confided to my keeping, I am able to give some extracts from them here. * * * * * '_July_ 1857.--The die is cast. For better or for worse, and I cannot now decide which it is. I have cast off the shackles which, for these many days, have bound me. I am thinking, acting, living, in my own person. And the strange part of it is that, with everything to make me uneasy and miserable, I am happier far and more tranquil than I have been for weeks. That is why I am writing now. 'It is deep night, and we are halting--Hoosanee and I--in the midst of a forest, while Ganesh, our guide, goes on to make arrangements for our admission into the fort, which is held, as I hear, by Dost Ali Khan. I have his safe-conduct, presented to me at Delhi, on my person. Ganesh tells me that it has already saved me from death once, that had I not had it about me, the soldier Abdul--my gaoler on the White Ranee's march--would certainly have killed me. Possibly it may save me again. In any case I can do no other than I have done. Whatever the issue may be, I must await it with fortitude. Grace, I believe, is in that fort. I will leave it with her, or I vow before God that I will not leave it at all. If she is dead, which I cannot and will not believe, then I will return to Gumilcund, and give myself up to my people, letting them do what they will with me.