"I'll tell him when next he comes out."
"At what time did you say?" asked the cripple, looking on the ground as though he only put the question casually.
"At twelve."
The cripple's eyes glistened as he heard this.
"Well, well," he said, pressing some more money into the door porter's hand, "I'll call again, and perhaps you may have seen my boy, and comforted him with the assurance that I'll save him, in spite of all the ill these accursed English people can work by the aid of their money."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" said the porter. "The English are at work in it, eh?"
"Yes. They owe him some spite, and money, you know, can buy any thing—any thing." And blessing the gatekeeper, he hobbled off.
* * * * *
Near the prison he overtook a blind man begging by the roadside, and while stopping to drop a coin in his hat, the cripple contrived to whisper a few hurried words to this effect—
"I have made a step—almost made a breach in the fortress."