“I beg you both to hold me in remembrance, and I promise not to forget you. We shall meet again.
Rosa Ziska.”
The soap bore evident marks of having been pricked through with darning-needles, to make sure that neither files nor money were concealed inside. Nevertheless, as soon as they were locked up for the night Gavin and St. Arnaud proceeded to dissolve the soap in a basin of water by the light of the brilliant moon, which flooded their cells through the narrow window. They were rewarded by finding small scraps of paper, so cunningly laid inside the soap that a needle could pass through it without trouble. After carefully saving every scrap and drying them all, daylight revealed them to be, when pieced together, a bank-note for a hundred ducats and a map of the country around Glatz, showing, in particular, the road to the Bohemian mountains. Several villages on the route were marked by crosses, indicating it was safe to stop at them.
“And I thought she had forgotten us!” said Gavin remorsefully.
“Women, my dear boy, rarely desert us in misfortune. They carefully choose our time of prosperity to play the deuce. They are considerate even in tormenting us. One thing is sure about this particular woman, Madame Ziska—she thinks us a couple of enterprising fellows, and evidently expects us to escape, and I cannot bear to disappoint the expectations of a lady.”
“It seems to me,” said Gavin, “that for prisoners captured by the King’s own hand we have very little attention shown us by the commandant. He might have asked us to dinner, at least.”
The very next morning Pfels, the tall, thin adjutant, appeared with the compliments of General Kollnitz and an invitation to dinner at four o’clock. Pfels, who was a very civil, pleasant fellow, explained that this would have been done before, but that the commandant had been suffering from rheumatism, and had been obliged to keep his bed for some time past. His health, however, was now restored.
The invitation was promptly accepted, and then Gavin began to tease St. Arnaud to tell him the plan of escape in which the commandant figured. St. Arnaud good-naturedly refused, and then Gavin cried:
“But let us swear never to be divided from each other, for I believe our chance of safety is increased tenfold by being together.”
St. Arnaud smiled; he read Gavin like a book, and saw that this pretense of finding safety together was only the heart of Gavin clinging to what it loved.