The day passed; then another and another. I had read many stories of captures and imprisonments, but in none of them could I find a parallel for my own unhappy situation. With unvarying regularity at morning and evening the same foul-smelling, unwashed bowl, filled with food that varied only in degrees of offensiveness, was handed in to me. The life and the food and the home of many beasts would have been a relief and a joy to me. And what was my crime? I was a mere boy. I had never spoken word nor lifted hand on either side. True, I had saved the life of a man from the hands of a mob; and was I to drag out my life in a dark, dripping, unhealthy cave for that?
It was well on in the third week of my bitter experience, just as I had found it almost impossible to hope for deliverance, that, one afternoon, I heard the sound of loud voices approaching. As the door was being opened, I heard the voice of a man protesting loudly. He was saying—
'I tell you again, I am on no side. I am an honest farmer, and wish to go back to my farm from which you dragged me. I am neither Whig nor Tory; I will not fight on the side of either King or people. I must work my farm, and support my wife and children.'
As he spoke the last words, he was rudely pushed into the mine, where his feet splashed some of the muddy water upon my face. A moment later, and without a word from those outside, the door was closed, and the timbers were replaced against it.
Chapter V
The Trial and Escape
I did not speak. For a time the man evidently considered himself alone. It was several minutes before—his eyes having become adjusted to the partial darkness—he discovered me. His jaw dropped, his hands went up, and I noticed some of the warm colour slip out of his face. He drew sharply back, and gazed at me in undisguised amazement for some moments. A little later the look of wonder shaded into one of sympathy.
'How long have you been here?' he said.
'Almost three weeks,' I told him.