the present. I will come below again in a few minutes, to
conduct you to your citadel."

CHAPTER XX.

Some writers make all ladies purloined,
And knights pursuing like a whirlwind;
But those, that write in rhyme, still make
The one verse for the other's sake.

HUDIBRAS.

Morton and his companions had left the prison a few minutes past ten
o'clock. It was nearly one when an officer, who was up and passing
through the plaza for certain good reasons best known to himself,
noticed, as he approached the guard-house, that there was an unusual
degree of stillness about it; no sentry challenged as he drew near, and
indeed there seemed to be none on post. Surprised at this, he entered
the porch, or as it is called in New England, the "_pye_-azza," where he
found the sentry seated, as before described, and snoring most lustily.
Him he attempted to awaken by a very summary process; namely, by
tumbling him from his seat upon the ground; but so stupified was the
fellow with the drugged wine that he had drank, that after uttering
certain unintelligible growlings, he again slept and snored. Passing
into the interior, the officer found the corporal and his "brave
compeers" as sound asleep and as motionless as the enchanted
inhabitants of a fairy castle. After bestowing upon them several sound
and hearty kicks, without producing any vivifying effects, he perceived
that the door of the inner room, or prison, was wide open, and the room
itself as empty as--an author's pockets. On further examination he found
a basket, the remains of food, three or four empty bottles and
drinking-cups, one or two full bottles, and a phial containing a small
quantity of dark-colored liquid, with the qualities of which he did not
think it prudent to make himself acquainted by experiment upon his own
person; not possessing a particle of the philosophical courage and zeal
of Sir Humphrey Davy, who gulped down poisonous gases till it became a
matter of astonishment and mystery to his friends, as well as himself,
how he contrived to find his way back into this world, after having
strolled so far beyond its limits. The phial, however ignorant he was of
the nature of its contents, explained, in connection with the empty
bottles, the cause of the death-like sleep of the guard.

After deliberating for an extremely short space of time (for when a man
has nobody near to bother him with advice, he ma