one of them and
prepared, with its help, to slip down to the pavement on the outer
side of the wall. The rope was not strong enough, however, to bear his
weight; it snapped when he was some twenty-five feet from the ground,
and caused him to fall with his back upon the stone pavement. There he
lay, in an almost unconscious state, for a considerable time. But no
passer-by observed him; and before daylight he was able to crawl to
the house of an old nurse of his eldest son's, who gladly afforded him
concealment.

Long concealment was not intended by him. "If it had not been," he
said, "for the commotion excited by that obnoxious, injurious, and
arbitrary measure, the Corn Bill, which began to evince itself on
the day of my departure from prison, I should have lost no time in
proceeding to the House of Commons; but, conjecturing that the spirit
of disturbance might derive some encouragement from my unexpected
appearance at that time, and having no inclination to promote tumult,
I resolved to defer my appearance at the House, and, if possible,
to conceal my departure from the prison, until the order of the
metropolis should be restored."

To the same effect was a letter addressed by Lord Cochrane to the
Speaker of the House of Commons on the 9th of March. "I respectfully
request," he said therein, "that you will state to the honourable
the House of Commons, that I should immediately and personally
have communicated to them my departure from the custody of Lord
Ellenborough, by whom I have been long most unjustly detained; but I
judged it better to endeavour to conceal my absence, and to defer my
appearance in the House until the public agitation excited by the Corn
Bill should subside. And I have further to request that you will also
communicate to the House that it is my intention, on an early day, to
present myself for the purpose of taking my seat and moving an inquiry
into the conduct of Lord Ellenborough."

On the day of that letter's delivery, the 10th of March--also famous
as the day on which Buonaparte's escape from Elba was published in
England--Lord Cochrane's gaolers discovered that he was no longer
in his prison. Immediately a hue and cry was raised. This notice was
issued: "Escaped from the King's Bench Prison, on Monday the 6th day
of March, instant, Lord Cochrane. He is about five feet eleven inches
in height,[A] thin and narrow-chested, with sandy hair and full eyes,
red whiskers and eyebrows. Whoever wi