imile, "as dark as if all the negroes of Africa had been
stewed down into air." "You might have cut the fog with a knife," as
the proverb says. Paul and Augustus could not even see how significantly
each looked at the other.

It was a remarkable trait of the daring temperament of the former, that,
young as he was, it was fixed that he should lead the attempt. At the
hour, then, for chapel the prisoners passed as usual through the door.
When it came to Paul's turn he drew himself by his hands to the pipe,
and then creeping along its sinuous course, gained the wall before he
had even fetched his breath. Rather more clumsily, Augustus followed
his friend's example. Once his foot slipped, and he was all but over.
He extended his hands involuntarily, and caught Paul by the leg. Happily
our hero had then gained the wall, to which he was clinging; and for
once in a way, one rogue raised himself without throwing over another.
Behold Tomlinson and Paul now seated for an instant on the wall to
recover breath; the latter then,--the descent to the ground was not very
great,--letting his body down by his hands, dropped into the garden.

"Hurt?" asked the prudent Augustus, in a hoarse whisper, before he
descended from his "bad eminence," being even willing--

"To bear those ills he had,
Than fly to others that he knew not of"

"No!" without taking every previous precaution in his power, was the
answer in the same voice, and Augustus dropped.

So soon as this latter worthy had recovered the shock of his fall,
he lost not a moment in running to the other end of the garden. Paul
followed. By the way Tomlinson stopped at a heap of rubbish, and picked
up an immense stone. When they came to the part of the wall they had
agreed to scale, they found the watchman,--about whom they needed not,
by the by, to have concerned themselves; for had it not been arranged
that he was to have met them, the deep fog would have effectually
prevented him from seeing them. This faithful guardian Augustus knocked
down, not with a stone, but with ten guineas; he then drew forth from
his dress a thickish cord, which he procured some days before from the
turnkey, and fastening the stone firmly to one end, threw that end over
the wall. Now the wall had (as walls of great strength mostly have) an
overhanging sort of battlement on either side; and the stone, when
flung over and drawn to the tether of the cord to which it w