Ah! my children, ye know not how trying was that indifferent walk. How sore was I tempted to break into a run, in a mad effort to leave that awful place behind me. But then, had I done so, I had not lived to see the setting of another sun. As we passed beneath the great portcullis I glanced back to where we had left the sentry. He was still standing beneath the light and gazing after us. No doubt he wondered who we were; but my apparent confidence and ease of manner re-assured him; for as we turned to our left to pass the round tower which adjoins the one in which I had been confined, he shouldered his pole-axe and resumed his lonely tramp. "Two difficulties safely past," I whispered. "Now, Michael, have a great care and let not the soldier at the breach make the faintest sound." "Oi'll do moy bist, sor," and I felt sure he would. Then we came to the short inner wall that runneth from the tower of St. Thomas back unto the square tower that we had just left. As is ever the case, when one is in great haste, I tried every key but one depending from the ring, and still the great gate remained closed, none of them mating the lock. When I came to this last key a sudden horror came over me as I thought of the possibility of the whole affair being a trap to raise my hopes in the belief that I was about to escape, and then to have them hurled to the ground with shattering force. My life depended on this key. Would it turn back the bars and give me freedom and life, or would it, like the others, mock with its silent contempt my anxiety? How I longed to know my fate, and yet dreaded the test, lest I should fail. My hand shook as with palsy, and made it well nigh impossible for me to insert the key. Then 'twas in the lock; and still I did not turn it. Verily, I have faced the deadly cannon, oft, and yet have felt no anxiety nor fear. But now, as I stood before that heavy gate, with the key already in the lock, requiring but a turn--that is if it did work--to set me at least nearer unto liberty, my courage did forsake me, and I really feared to turn the key. Some there are, I know, who will say it was unmanly in me to thus hesitate. Mine answer, in advance, is:--Let them but place themselves in the same position and see then how they will act. It requires but little courage to tell what one would do; but it is different when one doth face the reality and not the argument.