Pagina 254 de 416

He had tried to fulfil his promise to the letter. Twice he had

removed one of the windows before the alert guard detected him,

and once he had nearly succeeded in cutting his way through the

two-inch planking of his ceiling before the chips and sawdust

were discovered, and he was deprived of his clasp-knife.

Every hour of every day his mind had been constantly on this

business of escape. Even during the reading, to which he fled to

protect his reason, it was the motive of every chapter, and he

would drop off in the middle of a page into a reverie, and grow

inwardly excited over some wild plan that mapped itself out

completely in his feverish brain.