In reply, he shook his head despairingly.

His visitor seemed to understand him.

“It is too high, perhaps?”

Cris intimated by a sign that the difficulty was not in its height.

“The bars would prevent you getting out?”

The hunter’s head nodded like a mandarin’s.

“Is that all? Then I may as well tell you. Hush! some one is coming.”

One of the sentinels had thrust his head inside the door; he luckily withdrew it, convinced that all was right.

On its disappearance Carrol’s mysterious visitor returned, and resumed the conversation.

“You think those bars would hinder your escape?”