"Well, it was curious. There was a 'Smasher'" (utterer of counterfeit coin) "named Molony in for life there—a thin-shanked, shambling fellow, as Smashers mostly are—mere trash. He had got a file, this fool, and dared not use it—kept it as close as though it were 'bacca,' and waited for his chance, instead of making his chance for himself. Damme, if I had a file!"
Mr. Rolfe's feelings of irritation were almost too much for him; he turned up the whites of his eyes, so that persons who were unacquainted with his views upon religious subjects might have supposed him to be engaged in some devotional exercise.
"Next door to this fellow—though it seemed a long way off, for the cell was in an angle of the prison—there was one of the right sort; name of Jeffreys. No prison in England could have held him if he had had a file. With a rusty nail as he had picked up he dug through his cell wall, and came out one night, all of a sudden, upon the Smasher—thought he was out of doors, poor beggar, through this cursed angle, you see, and after all had only changed his room."
"That must have been the devil," observed Richard.
"It was," said Mr. Rolfe, significantly.
"'Why, how on earth did you do it?' asked the Smasher. At least I suppose he did, for the conversation was not reported, as you shall hear. 'With a mere nail, too. Why, I've got a file, and yet I never thought of that.'
"'A file!' cried Jeffreys. 'Let's look. Give it to me.'
"But Molony wouldn't give it him. The case was this, you see. If Jeffreys could have filed his irons off, and then the window-bars, he could have made a push for it; but he couldn't wait for the other; the night was too far gone for that—there was only time for one to free himself and get away. The Smasher was willing enough to make an effort now; the other's pluck had put a good heart into him. But since he had been there so long, and never moved a hand to help hisself, Jeffreys thought he might stop a little longer; it seemed to him dog-in-the-manger like to be refused the file—at least that's my view of what he thought; though he's been blamed a good deal for what afterward happened."
"But what did happen?"
"Well, they got to high words; the t'other wouldn't give up the file; and when Jeffreys tried to get hold of it, what did the aggravation Smasher do—for you see he was used to bolting half-crowns and such like—but swallow the file!"