hip bone and made a nasty gash, and there is another just
below it. If the first wound had been two inches higher there would have
been nothing to do but to bury you."

"Well, this is a nice business," Mikail said, when the doctor had left.
"To think of that little villain being so treacherous! You were right
and I was wrong, Ivan, though how you guessed he was up to mischief is
more than I can imagine."

"Well, you know the fellow's history, Mikail, and that he had murdered
nine people he had lived among and who trusted him. What could one
expect from a villain like that?"

"Oh, I know he is a bad one," Mikail said, "but I did not think he dare
take the risk."

"I don't suppose he thought there was much risk, Mikail. If I had been
asleep he would have stabbed you to the heart, and when we found you
dead in the morning who was to know what prisoner had done it?"

"Well, it was a lucky thought my putting you next to me, young fellow; I
meant it for your good not for my own, and now you see it has saved my
life."

"A kind action always gets its reward, Mikail--always, sooner or later;
in your case it has been sooner, you see. Now I shall go off to sleep,
for I feel as drowsy as if I had been up for the last three nights."

CHAPTER X

PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT.

The next morning Godfrey and Mikail were by the doctor's orders carried
to the hospital and placed in a comfortable and well-arranged ward. "You
won't have to be here many days," the doctor said when he came round the
ward. "I only had you brought here because the air is sweeter and better
than it is in that room you were in." An hour later the governor with a
clerk came in. Mikail was first called upon for his statement, which was
written down by the clerk.

"Had you any reason for supposing that the man had any special enmity
against you?" the governor asked.

"Only because of that flogging he had for the row in the ward last week,
sir."

"Ah, yes, he was one of those who attacked you then and was flogged;
that accounts for it."

Then Godfrey gave his account of what had happened.

"Did you observe anything that made you specially watchful?" the
governor asked.

"I thought perhaps one of them might try to take revenge on Mikail, sir.
One or two of them were very sullen and surly, and would, I thought, do
him harm if they had the chance; but I suspected this man more than the
others because he seemed so unnaturally pleasant, and as I had