And so with the quiet regularity of an expert, the sentence came back to me.

"Elsie here--Who are you?"

I felt much inclined, of course, to ask who Elsie might be, but I made my answer--fearing a trap--by the mere spelling out of my name and address, "Joseph Yarrow, Breckonside."

Then there was tapped out hurried, imperfectly, in a manner denoting undue and even foolish emotion--"Dearest Joe. I thank you for trying to help me. Your Elsie."

There was evidently some mistake. No one had a right to answer me thus--least of all an Elsie--my wife's name being Mary, and she as little likely to address me as "Dearest Joe," as to call me the Grand Mogul! In fact, it was nothing less than a prodigious liberty--whoever Elsie might be.

But a thought flashed across my mind. The young dog! At it already!

If I had my hand on his collar, I would teach him to be anybody's "Dearest Joe!" "Dearest Joe" indeed! I would "Dearest Joe" him!

But after all the situation had made me smile, and I knew that there was but one Elsie in Breckonside--Elsie Stennis--and as good a girl as ever stepped! Too good for Joe, if only she had her rights--what with the old rascal's property, not that I minded much about that--and a temper which would make Master Joe toe the line. He had need of that--I never!

Now I do not say that I thought all that then. I desire to be exact in the smallest details. I merely smiled, perhaps a little grimly, and rapped out the correction--"Joseph Yarrow, Senior."

I knew that would surprise her. For I must have had the reputation of being in my grave for many days before the wretched crew at Deep Moat Grange got hold of her.

Then very falteringly was rapped out the further question: "Are you really Joe's father?"

I replied that I had been given to believe so, but that Joe's apparent conduct might well give rise to doubts.

The answer came back at once:

"You don't mean that, Mr. Yarrow!"

Which, I will own, fairly conquered me--almost made me laugh, and though an old man, I felt quite warm about the heart. Now, when I came to think of it, I had always liked to see Elsie Stennis tripping about the village streets. One picture I was foolish enough to remember--a dingy November day after it had been raining, and Elsie going to school to her teaching. She was crossing the little dirty place in front of Ebie McClintock's forge, and she stooped to pick up her skirts, giving them a little shake, and then hopped across with her nose in the air--pert and pretty as a robin redbreast.

No fool like an old fool. I am speaking to you--Mr. Joseph Yarrow, Senior.

CHAPTER XXVI

COMRADES IN CAPTIVITY

After that we had much intercourse. There was, indeed, little else to do, though now I know that the periods when I could get no answer were those in which the three sisters still in hiding were in the habit of visiting Elsie in company generally with Mad Jeremy. Little by little, however, Miss Stennis--well, after being addressed as "Dearest Joe" I suppose I may as well say "Elsie"--told me all about her position--the manner of her capture, and the liberty, comparative though it was, which she enjoyed. I made up my mind at once that if I were to escape at all, it must be through her chamber.

It was about this time that the truth as to the manner in which I was attached to the wall flashed upon me. I could see it all now, and wondered how I had not understood it before. I have already explained that the rings to which my ankles were attached ended in round rods or bolts that pa.s.sed through the wall. But the bolts turned easily with every movement of my body, instead of being (as one would have expected) firmed into the thickness of the wall. Now it was all clear as an invoice. The bolts pa.s.sed right through into the chamber occupied by Elsie, and were there attached either to other similar rings or held in place by a crossbar of some sort.

I used the code--my foolish thought for Joe, now so useful--to ask the girl if she could see anything at the place upon which I knocked with my feet. She replied that it was impossible, because in that place there was a deep cupboard of which she had not got the key. Now, I know the locks of cupboard doors. I sell them. And the fact is that most of them are worthless as fastenings, except perhaps a few like the one in Miss Elsie's room, which had been planned by the monks some hundred years ago.

But even so, the lock would almost certainly have had to be renewed--probably quite recently--in view of the use to which the underground pa.s.sages and cellars were to be put. I therefore "knocked"

a message through to Elsie to secrete a stout knife. She had it already. I might have expected as much of her. Then I told her how to slide the blade of the knife with its back downward into the crack of the door. The supple bend of the knife blade, taking the shape of the bolt, would in all probability after a little trial cause it to slide back easily.

After a little Elsie succeeded. The bolt, as I expected, was a biased one, not square on the face, and hardly caught into the bolt hole at all. It had come from my own shop, and I knew its capabilities. They make them by the hundred gross, all as like as peas, and just sufficiently strong to keep out the cat. But mostly, if people think a place is locked, it _is_ locked--especially women.

I could hardly wait the reply, after Elsie had been into the deep cupboard. It was all I could hope for. The bolts came through into the cupboard about three feet from the floor, which showed that my chamber was higher than hers; they were caught by iron linch-pins in the same way that an axle of a red farm cart is fastened on to the outside of the hub.

"Could Elsie knock them out, did she think?"

Elsie thought she could, but she would need something heavy--like a bar of iron. She had it--the handle of the broken rake that had been used in the oven furnace. So the first thing after supper and the departure of her visitors, Elsie knocked out the pins. I drew out the bolts on my side, and was free to move about--with, it is true, the rings and bolts jangling about my ankles. Still, in part I was free, and my heart rose within me.

First of all I managed with the cord of my hat to tie up the bolts so that I could move noiselessly about, being careful for the time being not to go far from my couch. For of course it was necessary for me, at the first alarm, to undo the cords and thrust the bolts through the holes, so that no change might be apparent to my jailers. Still, the thing comforted me. For not only was I able to take some exercise, but to attend to the proper ordering of my chamber, which had hitherto been carried out in the most perfunctory manner by Jeremy, and also at very uncertain intervals.

But what chiefly occupied my mind was the thought that, according to Elsie the oven was of easy access from her room, and doubtless would have been visited frequently by whoever had the charge of the baking.

I could therefore, with Elsie's iron bar, if no better turned up, make a good fight for both our liberties. The situation was getting altogether too ridiculous for a man of business habits, shut up within a few miles of his own horses, lorries, his grocery, ironmongery, and other supplying and contracting establishments.

How I was ever to face Bob Kingsman I did not know. I wondered if all this time he were taking his orders from "Dearest Joe." Joe indeed! I lacked confidence in my son as a man of business--as it turned out, without reason. He might even have brought me to the verge of bankruptcy. There were, I was informed, two young ladies from London dwelling in my house, of whom--especially one of them--Elsie reported to me by code a very poor account. They seemed completely to have gotten the mastery over my poor wife, who was, as it appeared, prostrated with grief--a thing I should not have antic.i.p.ated. On every account it seemed about time that I should come to life again.

The question was merely one of detail. How?

Of course, I did not hide from myself that as the days went by, marked, for me, only by the lighting and darkening of my jackdaw's entrance above, many things would certainly be happening outside. For one thing, I was a prominent ratepayer, and the cleaning and lighting taxes, as well as the school and road rates for the parishes of Breckonside and Over Breckonton, would be coming due. If for nothing else, they would be sure to hunt me up to pay them. For, as I had appealed against them all--on principle--Joe would not be able to settle them without me. He would have done it if he could, having no "fight" in him--that boy taking after his mother--but my lawyer would see him further first, being a minor. I could trust Mr. C. P.

Richards--he would not pay a farthing till he had an order under my hand or a proof of my decease. Yes. They would seek for me. No doubt of that.

And Elsie? Of course she was not a ratepayer; but--well, if, as was likely, they had seen her shake out her skirts to trip across a muddy road they would be just as great fools as myself.

And they were greater--every man of them. I know Breckonside.

Well, now, to join on our doings in the cellar (as it were) to those up aloft in the front hall, it was about this time that our meals began to wax irregular. The Breckonside mob, ill led, and incapable of knowing exactly what it wanted, had come and gone, defeated by the cunning of Miss Aphra--very clever woman, Miss Aphra--and the cheerful, innocent brutality of Dr. Hector.

There was still talk about us, no doubt, but desultory--some semblance of action, too. In fine, little real work was being done, when our provisions began to get scarce down below in the old stone storehouses of the monks.

Indeed, so far as I was concerned, I should have starved if Elsie Stennis, who was still occasionally remembered, had not pushed through the bolt holes long strips of the home-made loaves with which Mad Jeremy supplied her. As for water, she had a spoon tied to the end of the iron rod; and I took it as a babe does pap. It was, I am free to say, most kindly done. For at no time had she too much for herself, and though I do not make too much of a thing like that, neither, on the other hand, do I forget it. After a long, sleepless night of thought, I resolved that the very next evening I should borrow the iron rod from Elsie, which had formerly been used as a rake shaft of the bakery furnace.

Elsie pa.s.sed it to me through the communicating hole. But there was a hooked handle at the end which prevented it coming all the way till Elsie in her dark cupboard had made a hole sufficiently large to push it through; while I, with Elsie's knife, cut out a piece of the wooden lining of my cell so that it could again be fitted in to avoid suspicion. Then I had a thoroughly strong bar of iron in my possession, with which, considerably elated, I began to make a way through into Elsie's room. But it was slow work. The knife had first to be serrated on the back to form a kind of rough saw. I did this with a sort of projecting tooth or claw of the rake handle, where it had been broken off. And I own that the work was not without a certain charm of its own. In my youth I remember--to my shame--to have carried the life of a certain Count of Monte Cristo--whose name I have not met with elsewhere, but with whom I should much have liked to have had business relations--under my waistcoat to school. He appears to have been, like us, a prisoner. And his account of how he pierced thick walls was not wholly without interest. I wished I had kept the notes I made in my pocket-book reporting his manner of procedure. It was from him, for instance, that I got the idea of the rook's feather, while the jackdaws, chunnering to themselves up above and occasionally descending to peck, did the rest.

Ultimately I was enabled to cut through the wooden lining of my cell, only to find the wall behind of solid masonry, but with the lime hopefully crumbly round the little holes by which the bars pa.s.sed into Elsie's cupboard.

All this took some time, and I required the help of Miss Stennis at every step. I fear some nights the young lady did not get much sleep, for every particle of debris--stone, lime, sawdust--had to be conveyed through the narrow holes made for the leg bolts, then taken up in the palms of her hands and conveyed to the little trapdoor behind her bed beneath which was the flowing water. It was not much of an operation on my side--rough work, ill done--and had any man in my employ tried to pa.s.s off such workmanship on me, I should have showed him round the yard with the point of my boot--ay, and out at the front gate, too!

Still, it was done, which was the main thing. And after I had bethought me to widen the two bolt holes by making them one--all, that is, except the pieces of wood which hid the tunnel on either side--the work went on much faster. You see, I was always in fear of Mad Jeremy or somebody coming to search. But, as a matter of fact, n.o.body looked near me, and on Elsie's side she was protected by the dark cupboard.

Still, it was better to leave nothing to chance, and to treat Mad Jeremy, with his wild eyes and insane freaks, as if he had been the most suspicious of jailers.

But any one who gives the matter a thought will see in what a humiliating position I was placed, utterly forgotten, as it seemed, even by those who had taken possession of my cheque in order to compel me to sign it. Was it possible, I asked myself, that they had found some one to forge my signature, negotiated it at a distance, and fled with the proceeds? Of Mad Jeremy I still had news. For at intervals he supplied Miss Stennis with food, sometimes days old, for it was but seldom that he baked now; and though the weather was milder without, both Elsie's cell and mine became much less comfortable, though not, so far as I could observe, damp.

It was evidently a period of great excitement with the lunatic who had const.i.tuted himself our caretaker. Putting my ear to the excavation, I could hear him whistling and singing while he was in the chamber behind the oven talking to Elsie. Once I heard him. playing upon some instrument, which sounded like the bagpipes, but was in reality his precious fiddle. And I will say that I lay and gripped my nails into my hands in impotent anger to think that there was, according to my most accurate measurements, at least a foot of stone and lime, laid with burned sh.e.l.l and sand as only the old monks knew how, all to pick out piecemeal with the point of my weapon before I could be of the slightest use to the young lady in the case of an attack.

Once it was evident that Jeremy had been listening at the door. He opened upon me suddenly and demanded what was that knocking he had heard? I answered that I was trying to attract attention to the fact that I had been several days without either food or water. He looked at me suspiciously, and said--

"It sounded more like somebody beating a tune!"

I turned over immediately, and, with my knuckles as far away as possible from the boards I had been so long patiently sawing out, I tattooed the measure of "The Wind that Shakes the Barley," the identical tune the madman had been playing in Elsie's chamber.

"Oh!" he cried, "can you fiddle?"

"No," said I, "but I have a good ear, and I used to be able to foot it in my day!"