Roy tossed two more bits of wood into the hotte. Then he stood up, yawned, and stared listlessly in another direction. After which he hung lazily over the hotte, as if to play with the wood, and under cover of it a touch of cold steel came against his left hand.
“Hist!”—at the same instant.
Roy grasped and slipped the something securely out of reach and out of sight, without a moment’s hesitation. His right hand still turned over the wood.
“Bon!” Jean murmured, making a considerable clatter. Then, low and clearly—“Listen! If M’sieu will file away the bar of his window—ready to be removed—I will be there outside, to-morrow night after dark. When M’sieu hears a whistle—hist! But truly this weight is considerable—oui, M’sieu—and a poor man like me may not complain.”
Jean hitched up the big hotte, now full, and passed on, grumbling audibly, while Roy strolled back to his former position. His heart was beating like a hammer, and he dreaded lest he might betray his change of mood in his face. To return to his former dejected attitude was not easy when new life was stirring in every vein; but he managed to shirk observation, and when two o’clock came it was a relief to be alone in his cell. He could safely there fling his arms aloft in a frenzy of delight.
If only little Will might have escaped with him! That thought lay as a weight of sorrow in his joy.
But there was little leisure for regrets. He had a task to accomplish in a given time, and it might not be an easy task. Many a time he had examined the stout iron bar wedged firmly in across the small window. If that could be taken out, he would be able to squeeze himself through; but to take out the bar, or at least to move it on one side, meant first to file nearly through it—quite through, indeed, for the noise of breaking it might not be risked. What might lie on the other side, down below, he could only guess, since the deep embrasure within, and the thickness of the wall without, prevented him from seeing.
The gendarmes visited him at stated intervals, and he could pretty well reckon upon their visits; yet he knew well that he was never secure against a sudden interruption at any moment. He had to work at the bar in a difficult and cramped position, supporting himself in a corner of the slanting embrasure and filing lightly, so that no sound should reach the ears of any passer-by outside, while his own hearing had to be incessantly strained towards the cell-door to catch the faintest intimation of anybody entering.
One narrow escape of detection he had. Absorbed in his toil, he failed to hear the first preliminary click of the lock, and the door began to open. Roy flung himself to the ground, reckless of bruises, and the noise of his fall was happily drowned in the creak of the door. When the gendarme entered, he found a sleepy prisoner, lying with head on folded arms. Roy wondered that the thumping of his heart did not betray him.
Thoughtful Jean had provided him with three files; and but for this the plan would have proved a failure. Two of them broke. The third held out to the end.