been
brought to the knowledge of those from whom we most desired to keep it
concealed; but that now we had time to rest, and a shelter to rest in,
during the first hot pursuit, which we knew to a fatal certainty was
being carried on. The remnants of our food, and the stored-up fruit,
would supply us with provision; the only thing to be feared was, that
something might be required from the loft, and the miller or some one
else mount up in search of it. But even then, with a little arrangement
of boxes and chests, one part might be so kept in shadow that we might
yet escape observation. All this comforted me a little; but, I asked,
how were we ever to escape? The ladder was taken away, which was
our only means of descent. But Amante replied that she could make a
sufficient ladder of the rope lying coiled among other things, to drop
us down the ten feet or so--with the advantage of its being portable, so
that we might carry it away, and thus avoid all betrayal of the fact
that any one had ever been hidden in the loft.

During the two days that intervened before we did escape, Amante made
good use of her time. She looked into every box and chest during the
man's absence at his mill; and finding in one box an old suit of man's
clothes, which had probably belonged to the miller's absent son, she put
them on to see if they would fit her; and, when she found that they did,
she cut her own hair to the shortness of a man's, made me clip her black
eyebrows as close as though they had been shaved, and by cutting up old
corks into pieces such as would go into her cheeks, she altered both the
shape of her face and her voice to a degree which I should not have
believed possible.

All this time I lay like one stunned; my body resting, and renewing its
strength, but I myself in an almost idiotic state--else surely I could
not have taken the stupid interest which I remember I did in all Amante's
energetic preparations for disguise. I absolutely recollect once the
feeling of a smile coming over my stiff face as some new exercise of her
cleverness proved a success.

But towards the second day, she required me, too, to exert myself; and
then all my heavy despair returned. I let her dye my fair hair and
complexion with the decaying shells of the stored-up walnuts, I let her
blacken my teeth, and even voluntarily broke a front tooth the better
to effect my disguise. But through it all I had no hope of evading my
terrible husband. The third