d
him in his attempt. The two side-walls next received his attention; but
they were of great blocks of stone, joined by a cement of nearly equal
hardness, and on which, although he worked till his nails were torn to
shreds, and his fingers ran blood, he could not make the slightest
impression. As to the wall opposite to the door, he did not even examine
it; for it was easy to judge, from the grass and bushes growing against
the window in its top, that it was the outer wall of the convent. On
this, since he could make nothing of the partition-walls, all labour
would of course be thrown away; and even if he could bore through it, he
must find the solid earth on the other side, and be discovered before he
could possibly burrow his way out. As to the window, or rather the
iron-barred opening through which came light and air, for any purposes
of escape it might as well not have been there, for its lower edge was
nearly fourteen feet from the ground; and although Paco, who was a
first-rate leaper, did, in his desperation, and in the early days of his
captivity, make several violent attempts to jump up and catch hold of
the grating, they were all, as may be supposed, entirely without result.

It was the thirty-fifth day of his imprisonment, an hour after daybreak.
His provisions for the next twenty-four hours had been brought to him,
and, as usual, he had made an unsuccessful effort to induce his sullen
jailer to inform him why he was confined, and when he should be
released. Gloomy and disconsolate, he seated himself on the ground, and
leaned his back against the end wall of his dreary dungeon. The light
from the window above his head fell upon the opposite door, and
illuminated the spot where he had scratched, with the shank of a button,
a line for each day of his imprisonment. The melancholy calendar already
reached one quarter across the door, and Paco was speculating and
wondering how far it might be prolonged, when he thought he felt a
stream of cold wind against his ear. He placed his hand where his ear
had been, and plainly distinguished a current of air issuing from a
small crevice in the wall, which otherwise was smooth and covered with
plaster. Without being much of a natural philosopher, it was evident to
Paco, that if wind came through, there must be a vault on the other side
of the wall, and not the solid earth, as he had hitherto believed; and
it also became probable that the wall was deficient either in thicknes