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He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a

sudden exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the

worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few blows.

"Hold the light higher!" he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey.

"Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here is

my knife," throwing it to him; "rip open that bed, and search the

straw. Hold the light higher, you!"

With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth,

and, peering up the chimney, struck and prised at its sides with

the crowbar, and worked at the iron grating across it. In a few

minutes, some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he

averted his face to avoid; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes,

and in a crevice in the chimney into which his weapon had slipped

or wrought itself, he groped with a cautious touch.

"Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques?"

"Nothing."

"Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. So!

Light them, you!"