“Not a bit strange, sir,” replied the other, whose neighborhood made him acquainted with classes and varieties of men of whom Darcy knew nothing; “it was an attempt by the prisoners.”
“Do you think so?” asked Darcy.
“Ay, to be sure, sir; there's scarcely a year goes over without one contrivance or another for escape. Last autumn two fellows got away by following the course of the sewers and gaining the Liffey; they must have passed two days underground, and up to their necks in water a great part of the time.”
“Ay, and besides that,” observed another,-for already some ten or twelve persons were assembled on the roof as well as Darcy and the landlord,—“they had to wade the river at the ebb-tide, when the mud is at least eight or ten feet deep.”
“How that was done, I cannot guess,” said Darcy.
“A man will do many a thing for liberty, sir,” remarked another, who was buttoned up in a frieze coat, although the night was hot and sultry; “these poor devils there were willing to risk being roasted alive for the chance of it.”
“Quite true,” said Darcy; “fellows that have a taste for breaking the law need not be supposed desirous of observing it as to their mode of death; and yet they must have been daring rascals to have made such an attempt as this.”
“Maybe you know the old song, sir,” said the other, laughing,—
“There s many a man no bolts can keep,
No chains be made to bind them,
And tho' the fetters be heavy, and cells be deep,
He 'll fling them far behind them.”
“I have heard the ditty,” answered the Knight; “and if my memory serves me, the last lines run thus,—