’Twas a small file: and examining the loaf again, I found a clasp-knife also, and a strip of paper, neatly folded, hidden in the bread.
“Deare Jack,
“Colonel Essex, finding no good come of his interrogatories, hath set me at large; tho’ I continue under his eye, to wit, with a dowager of his acquaintance, a Mistress Finch. Wee dwell in a private house midway down St. Thomas his street, in Redcliffe: and she hath put a dismal dress upon me (Jack, ’tis hideous), but otherwise uses me not ill. But take care of thyself, my deare friend: for tho’ the Colonel be a gentilman, he is press’d by them about him, and at our last interview I noted a mischief in his eye. Canst use this file?—(but take care: all the gates I saw guarded with troopers to-day.) This by one who hath been my friend: for whose sake tear the paper up. And beleeve your cordial, loving comrade
“D. K.”
After reading this a dozen times, till I had it by heart, I tore the letter into small pieces and hid them in my pocket. This done, I felt lighter-hearted than for many a day, and (rather for employment than with any farther view) began lazily to rub away at my window bar. The file work’d well. By noon the bar was half sever’d, and I broke off to whistle a tune. ’Twas—
“Vivre en tout cas, C’est le grand soulas—”
and I broke off to hear the key turning in my lock.
The jailer’s daughter enter’d with my second meal. Her eyes were red with weeping.
Said I, “Does your father beat you?”
“He has, before now,” she replied: “but not to-day.”