He hurried on before her, and she followed as fast as she could run. How delighted the two friends were at meeting again! Rhoda stood outside the gate, and Maggie held her hand through the bars, and they told each other all that had happened since they parted. “I will get you away from here, see if I don’t!” said Rhoda. “Then we will start off together to find Alfonso, for I can make enough to keep us all by singing. I am quite rich already.” She pulled a little bag out of her bosom. “Feel how heavy it is,” she said. At last Rhoda went away. She said that she would not return till she had thought of a good plan for Maggie’s escape, and she commanded the cock to roost every night on the yard wall; for she would come back under cover of night, and wake him by throwing up a stone at him when her plan was ready. Rhoda was very clever—the making of songs and music was not the only thing she understood. When she found that the iron gate was fastened by a bolt, and that the bolt was held in its place by a padlock, she went off to the town and bought a file, and next night she returned and began to saw away. She did it from the outside, so that no one who might chance to come into the yard could see any mark on the bolt. When morning came it was cut through all but a little piece. Up the stream, a short way above the palace, was a house whose walls stood almost in the water, and near it a little boat was moored to a stake in the bank. This boat she determined should carry them all out of the Bishop’s reach. On the second night, therefore, when it was dark, and she guessed the palace people were in bed, she came stealing along to the gate. There was the cock at his post, fast asleep. When she had filed through the last bit of the bolt, she woke him with a stone, and signed to him to go and fetch Maggie. Then she ran to the boat, cut its rope with her knife, and, jumping into it, rowed quickly down to where her friends were waiting. How smoothly and how fast the water carried them along, as they ran into the current and the tall mass of the palace dropped behind them! Rhoda had the oars, and the cock sat in the bottom of the boat beside the guitar. Maggie was so much delighted to be free that she did not speak a word. The fields and the alder-trees slipped by, and when the spring day broke, she saw the tufts on the willows and the yellow stars of the celandines shining among the roots. She felt quite sure now that everything would go right. The whole day they rowed on, and when they thought themselves far enough from the Bishop to be safe, they jumped on shore and let the boat drift out of sight. Then they started off to seek their fortunes once more.