"But you can find out. You know where you took her."
"No. She has left the place to which I took her, and no one knows whither she has gone."
He looked at me keenly for some seconds, as if trying to find out if there was anything behind the words I had spoken. Presently he said: "If I were you I would engage the keenest lawyer in Cornwall to find out, and so prepare a case."
"I have done that. I suppose he will be allowed to visit me?"
"Yes, I shall allow you to have visitors. But mind, my lad, I can allow no trying to escape. You are a dead man if you do!"
As I sat in the Witch's Tower afterwards, I pondered over what he had said. In truth, my case was more serious than I had thought. I saw that did I not speak out boldly my life was in imminent danger, for the King was very bitter against those who appeared to side with the Pretender. To say that I longed for freedom would be but faintly to describe my feelings! Yet what could I do?
After I had been a prisoner for some time, I determined to try and escape. Every day the conviction grew upon me that the maid Nancy needed me. In my dreams I saw her hiding from her pursuers, I saw her at the mercy of the Killigrews, and when I awoke I thought I heard her crying to me to come and help her.
As the days went by, too, I became nervous. Lying alone in the silence of the Witch's Tower, and remembering all the stories I heard from Lethbridge concerning the life of the woman who had been burnt there, I became the prey of morbid fears. Often at night I thought I saw her lifting her skinny hands out of the fire which consumed her and fancied I could hear her dying cries. I, who had laughed at foolish superstitions and prided myself on my firm nerves, shuddered each day at the thought of the coming night, and when night came I suffered the torments of the lost.
And yet I dared not ask to leave the tower, for if I did I should doubtless be put in the common jail. Here not only would my surroundings be filthy and the atmosphere sickening, but I should be thrown into contact with the other prisoners.
Added to this, my chances of escape would be much lessened, for the place was on the whole strictly guarded. Whereas while at the Witch's Tower I was comparatively unmolested, I had a view of the world outside, and I thought I saw means whereby I might, if fortunate, obtain my liberty. To effect this I should have to bribe one of the jailers, and my plans would take several days to carry out. Nevertheless, if there was any chance of getting away from Launceston Castle, the fact of my occupying the dismal chamber I have mentioned gave it me.