"Your lover no more; your slave for ever," he said.
A moment later he had descended to earth, and Grace shed tears for the first time since her imprisonment. She drew up the ladder as he directed, hid it close and watched John Lee vanish into the dim dawn. Then she turned into her room and felt already that it was a memory of the past—a nest of youthful joys and sorrows, of many a girlish fancy and old dead dream, now left behind for ever.
CHAPTER VII
THE TUNNEL GROWS
Cecil Stark and William Burnham walked side by side in their exercise yard and discussed the affairs of the world. While the American prisoners toiled like moles underground, great events marked the time. The Allies were in Paris; Napoleon had abdicated and, for a moment, the war with France was ended. The Peace of Paris had been accomplished, and Europe took breath. Yet liberty's glorious reveille woke the French at Prince Town to more grief than joy.
"I can find it in me to be truly sorry for them," said Stark. "They have starved and frozen and suffered for an ideal cause and the ideal is shattered. They trusted Bonaparte as our people trust God; and now the idol they adored is fallen, and the master they hate is lifted up again."
"Men from Plymouth presented them with their old national flag and advised them to wear the white cockade," answered Burnham; "but every mother's son of 'em sticks to the tricolour and has pinned the Bourbon favour to his dog!"
"They cry out that Elba is too small to hold the spirit of Napoleon. Perhaps they are right. Time will show that," said Stark.
"Their wives and children will soften their griefs when they get home."
"Doubtless. And their common sense, so soon as the first smart of failure is past. War teaches men to look twice into the claims of kings."