own attendant. "It is a pity, he was a fine fellow. Well, there's
one more, and then the job's done."

He bent over Rupert, who ceased breathing.

"He's the only one with his eyes closed," he said. "I expect
there's someone would break her heart if she knew he was lying
here. Well, lift him up, mates."

The two months' imprisonment in the dungeon had done one good
service for Rupert. The absence of light had blanched his face, and
even had he been dead he could hardly have looked more white than
he did. The long hours in the water had made his hands deadly cold,
and the hair matted on his face added to the deathlike aspect.

"Put the stretcher on the ground, and roll him over on to it," one
of the men said. "I don't mind a dead man, but these are so clammy
and slimy that they are horrible to touch. There, stand between him
and the wall, put a foot under him, roll him over. There, nothing
could be better! Now then, off we go with him. The weight's more
than twice as much as the others."

Rupert lay with his face down on the stretcher, and felt himself
carried upstairs, then along several long passages, then through a
door, and felt the fresh evening air. Now by the sound he knew that
he was being carried over the bridge across the moat to the burying
ground. Then the stretcher was laid down.

"Now then, roll him over into the hole," one said, "and let us go
back for the last. Peste! I am sick of this job, and shall need a
bottle of eau de vie to put me straight again."

One side of the stretcher was lifted, and Rupert was rolled over.
The fall was not deep, some three or four feet only, and he fell on
a soft mass, whose nature he could well guess at. A minute later he
heard the retreating footsteps of his gaolers, and leaping from the
grave, stood a free man by its side.

He knew that he was not only free, but safe from any active
pursuit, for he felt sure that the gaolers, when they returned with
their last load, would throw it in and fill up the grave, and that
no suspicion that it contained one short of the number would arise.

This in itself was an immense advantage to him, for on the escape
of a prisoner from Loches--an event which had happened but once or
twice in its records--a gun was fired and the whole country turned
out in pursuit of the prisoner.

Rupert paused for two minutes before commencing his flight, and
kneeling down, thanked God for his escape. Then he climbed the low
ramparts, dropped