CHAPTER XXIII
TOURNAY'S VISITOR
For three days Tournay and St. Hilaire worked away persistently at the bars of their window. They only dared work between the hours of one and four in the morning. Not only secrecy but great ingenuity was called for, as it was necessary that the bars should preserve in the daytime their usual appearance of solidity.
To do this, all the filings were kept, and at the termination of each night's work, this dust, moistened by saliva into a paste, was smeared into the fissure they had made. Their intention was to cut each bar nearly through, leaving it standing, but so weakened that it could be torn out by a sudden wrench.
On the morning which terminated their third night's labor, just as the first gray streak in the east announced the early coming of the long, hot summer day, the third bar had been cut halfway through. The two prisoners looked into each other's eyes. Both realized that they must work rapidly in order to complete their task in time.
"At all hazards we must begin earlier to-night," whispered St. Hilaire significantly. Tournay nodded. "There is still a good deal of work to be done, although a thin man might squeeze through," he said.
"Not a man of your breadth, colonel," replied St. Hilaire, carefully rubbing the dampened filings into the crevice. "We shall have to cut through all of them, and even then it will be a narrow passageway for your shoulders."
"Now for a little rest," he continued, descending from the table as quietly as a cat, and putting it in another part of the cell.
Tired out by their work and the attendant excitement, the two men threw themselves, fully dressed, upon their beds and slept until late in the morning. Their slumber might have continued until past noon had they not been rather unceremoniously awakened by the appearance of the turnkey and a couple of gendarmes by their bedside.