“Don’t mock at me, sir!” he thunder’d, bringing down his fist on the table. “I tell you the boy is a Papist!” He pointed furiously at Delia, who, now laughing also, answer’d him very demurely— “Indeed, sir—” “I saw you, I say.” “You are bold to make so certain of a Papist—” “I saw you!” “That cannot even tell maid from man!” “What is meant by that?” asks the tall soldier, opening his eyes. “Why, simply this, sir: I am no boy at all, but a girl!” There was a minute, during which the little man went purple in the face, and the rest star’d at Delia in blank astonishment. “Oh, Jack,” she whisper’d in my ear, “I am so very, very sorrow: but I _cannot_ wear these hateful clothes much longer.” She fac’d the company with a rosy blush. “What say you to this?” ask’d Colonel Essex—for ’twas he—turning round on the little man. “Say? What do I say? That the fellow is a Papist, too. I knew it from the first, and this proves it!” CHAPTER IX. I BREAK OUT OF PRISON. You are now to be ask’d to pass over the next four weeks in as many minutes: as would I had done at the time! For I spent them in a bitter cold cell in the main tower of Bristol keep, with a chair and a pallet of straw for all my furniture, and nothing to stay my fast but the bread and water that the jailer—a sour man, if ever there were one—brought me twice a day. This keep lies in the northwest corner of the outer ward of the castle—a mighty tall pile and strongly built, the walls (as the jailer told me) being a full twenty-five feet thick near the foundations, tho’ by time you ascended to the towers this thickness had dwindled to six feet and no more. In shape ’twas a quadrilateral, a little shorter from north to south than from east to west (in which latter direction it measured sixty feet, about), and had four towers standing at the four corners, whereof mine was five fathoms higher than the rest. Guess, then, how little I thought of escape, having but one window, a hundred feet (I do believe) above the ground, and that so narrow that, even without the iron bar across it, ’twould barely let my shoulders pass. What concern’d me more was the cold that gnaw’d me continually these winter nights, as I lay thinking of Delia (whom I had not seen since our examination), or gazing out on the patch of frosty heaven that was all my view. ’Twas thus I had heard Bristol bells ringing for Christmas in the town below. Colonel Essex had been thrice to visit me, and always offer’d many excuses for my treatment; but when he came to question me, why of course I had nothing to tell, so that each visit but served to vex him more. Clearly I was suspected to know a great deal beyond what appear’d in the letter: and no doubt poor Anthony Killigrew had receiv’d some verbal message from His Majesty which he lived not long enough to transmit to me. As ’twas, I kept silence; and the Colonel in return would tell me nothing of what had befallen Delia.