"The hour for departure will come, and I shall leave this house as full of doubt and uncertainty as when I entered it!" he ejaculated, starting up.
His eye chanced to fall upon a long nail in the wall opposite to the bed from which he had just risen.
A scheme which had already suggested itself to his mind, now assumed a feasible aspect:—he knew that the door was only locked, and not bolted; and that nail seemed to promise the means of egress.
He, however, first examined the candle which had been left him, and which still burned in the corner where he had concealed it:—to his joy he found that there was an inch remaining.
"With the assurance of light for another half hour, and good courage," he said to himself, "I may yet accomplish my purpose."
Having extracted the nail from the wall, he proceeded to pick the lock of the room-door—an operation which he successfully achieved in a few minutes.
Without a moment's hesitation, he issued from the room, bearing the candle in his hand.
As he crossed the landing towards the staircase, which he resolved to ascend, his foot came in contact with some object.
He picked it up: it was an old greasy pocket-book, tied loosely round with a coarse string, and as Markham raised it, a letter dropped out.
Richard was in the act of replacing the document in the pocket-book, which he intended to leave upon the stairs, so as to attract the notice of the inmates of the house, when the address on the outside of the letter caught his eyes.