Left to river. Right twenty to thicket."

Having read the figures, I rolled the tissue firmly, and hid it in
my ear. It was a day of some excitement, I remember, for that very
afternoon I was condemned to death. A priest, having heard of my
plight, came in that evening, and offered me the good ministry of
the church. The words, the face, of that simple man, filled me
with a deep tenderness for all who seek in the shadows of this
world with the lantern of God's mercy. Never, so long as I live,
shall an ill word of them go unrebuked in my hearing. He left me
at 10.30, and as he went away, my jailer banged the iron door
without locking it. Then I lay down there in the dark, and began
to tell off the time by my heartbeats, allowing forty-five hundred
to the hour, and was not far wrong. I thought much of his Lordship
as I waited. To him I had been of some service, but, surely, not
enough to explain this tender regard, involving, as it must have
done, bribery and no small degree of peril to himself. My counting
over, I tried the door, which swung easily as I put my hand upon
it, The little corridor was dark and I could hear no sound save the
snoring of a drunken soldier, committed that day for fighting, as
the turnkey had told me. I found the small window, and slid the
sash, and let my boots fall to the ground, then climbing through
and dropping on them. It was a dark night, but I was not long in
reaching the road and pacing my way to the path and river. His
Lordship and a boatman lay in the thicket waiting for me.

"This way," the former whispered, taking my arm and leading me to
the mouth of a little brook, where a boat was tied, the bottom
muffled with blankets. I took the stern seat, his Lordship the
bow, and we pushed off. The boatman, a big, husky fellow, had been
rowing a long hour when we put into a cove under the high shore of
an island. I could see a moving glow back in the bushes. It swung
slowly, like a pendulum of light, with a mighty flit and tumble of
shadows. We tied our boat, climbed the shore, and made slowly for
the light. Nearing it, his Lordship whistled twice, and got
answer. The lantern was now still; it lighted the side of a
soldier in high boots; and suddenly I saw it was D'ri. I caught
his hand, raising it to my lips. We could not speak, either of us.
He stepped aside, lifting the lantern. God! there stood Louise.
She was all in black, her head bent forward.

"Dear love!" I