"Sittin' on the coffin!" blurted out the voice of an English youth as the weight of the priest again came down heavily on my prison; and again I breathed easily.
"Come on, men!" shouted Hamilton, apprehensive of more curiosity. "We're wasting time! He may be escaping by the basement window!"
"Jam hiems transiit, imber abiit et recessit; surge, amica mea, et veni!" droned the priest, and the whole company clattered downstairs.
"Quick!—Out with you!" commanded Father Holland. "Speed to y'r heels, and blessing on the last o' ye!"
I dashed down the stairs and was bolting through the doorway when some one shouted, "There he is!"
"Run, Gillespie!" cried some one else—one of our men, I suppose—and I had plunged into the storm and raced for the ladders at the rear stockades with a pack of pursuers at my heels. The snow drifts were in my favor, for with my moccasins, I leaped lightly forward, while the booted soldiers floundered deep. I eluded my pursuers and was half-way up a ladder when a soldier's head suddenly appeared above the wall on the other side. Then a bayonet prodded me in the chest and I fell heavily backwards to the ground.
I was captured.
That is all there is to say. No man dilates with pleasure over that part of his life when he was vanquished. It is not pleasant to have weapons of defence wrested from one's hands, to feel soldiers standing upon one's wrists and rifling pockets.
It is hard to feel every inch the man on the horizontal.