"To you it may be sweet--all that would render it so to me is gone! My love is blighted--my hopes dead--the world would only be 'a wider prison;' let me end my misery with my life, and bury my shame with my body." "Preaching again! Look you, Ned, it is always the same accursed story, a lot of stuff talked--then you accept, and then retract, and after all go. Now I have no time for this! you shall not be tried--nor condemned--nor hung! I have planned your escape, and by Heaven it was no easy matter, and deuced expensive with bribes! A score of fellows are all ready to play their part, and I am d--d if you shall fail." "How am I to escape?" said L'Estrange, beginning to feel freedom, after all, was not to be despised; "the walls are high, the watchers vigilant." "The walls may be as high as Heaven, and the ditches as deep as hell, and the sentinels as vigilant as Argus, but I will do them all! Pest, do you take me for a nincompoop, or fool, or what? There, what do you think of that?" throwing down a coil of rope--"and of that?" flinging a file on the ground. "Now, I know you are not a fool, and will find out their use and you will promise me to escape! You will find the rope long enough to reach pretty near the rocks below the prison--your window looks south to Arthur's Seat." "And when I am out--where am I to go?" "Patience, by G--! and I'll tell you. There are rocks beneath your window; I took a reconnaissance of the whole yesterday; you must then slip down the hill--go through the back slums of the Canongate, get out by Holyrood, and make for the Hunter's Bog; if you are attacked there is a pistol, and a knife for close quarters.--Egad, that was a bright flash! and here comes my man; good-night, it is now close on midnight, Bill will wait till three in the morning--it is a famous night though! raining buckets, and dark as pitch! Don't let one of those accursed flashes show you dangling by the rope, or some one might spy you. Wait for a good blazer, and then drop like lightning, ha! ha! ha! good-night I'll have a jolly wet ride home." He then wrung L'Estrange's hand, telling him they would meet at Philippi, or mayhap in Hades if there was such a place; he would find him out if he was above ground anywhere. And, following the turnkey, he left him to manage his escape as he best could. END OF VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. ENDNOTES: [A] See Note A. _Oliver Cromwell._ [B] See Note B. _Weird of the Wentworths._ [C] See Note C. _Queen's Drive._ [D] See Note D. _Switzerland._ [E] See Note E. _Devil's Bridge._ [F] See Note F. _The Towers._ [G] See Note G. _Justifiable Suicide._ [H] See Note H. _Rebecca._