y dull work standing all night in the passage, but he was
determined to keep awake. Neal Ward had slipped through the fingers of
Captain Twinely's men twice. There was not much chance of his escaping
this time, but the sentry, for the honour of his corps, and for the sake
of the personal ill-will that every member of it bore to the prisoner,
was not going to run the smallest risk. Earlier in the night he had
amused himself by shouting insults of various kinds through the door
of the cellar. Later on he had given the prisoner a vivid and realistic
description of the way in which men are hanged, but Neal had made no
sign of hearing a word that was said to him, so the occupation grew
uninteresting. Now he whistled a few of his favourite airs, speculating
on the amount of the fifty pounds reward offered for Neal's capture
which would fall to his share, and estimating his chances of taking
some of the other United Irishmen for whom the Government had offered
substantial sums. Then he began to count the flagstones on the floor of
the passage. He had done this once or twice before, and had been able to
distinguish as many as twenty-five, which brought him more than half way
to the staircase, before the light failed him. This time he could
only count twenty. Beyond that the floor lay dimly visible, but it was
impossible to distinguish one stone from another.

"Damn it," He growled, "this isn't near as good a lamp as the first."

He counted again, and only reached a total of eighteen slabs of stone.
He glanced down the passage, and found that he could not see the end of
it. He looked at the lamp. It was burning very low. It occurred to him
as an unpleasant possibility that the girl had taken away the wrong
lamp--had taken the one with the oil in it and left him the empty one.
He reassured himself. This lamp was a different shape from that which
hung in the passage when he first took his post as sentry. He made up
his mind that its wick must require to be turned up. Perhaps it had been
badly trimmed. The girl who brought it was evidently sleepy; she would
be very likely to forget to trim it. He stepped forward to where the
lamp hung. He paused, startled by a slight noise at the far end of the
passage. He listened, but heard nothing more. It was necessary to lift
the lamp off the hook before he could trim the wick. He laid his musket
on the ground and reached up to it. As he did so he heard swift steps,
steps of heavy feet, on the