As soon as the cell-door clicked upon him, he commenced to work: first took off his boots; then felt over the doorshelf for the chloroform; wet his handkerchief with some of it: then inserted the vials across the toes of his boots, which were a succession of wrinkles, far too large; then put on the boots again.

He then lay on the floor, close to the low shelf; and, pressing the handkerchief over his mouth and nose, breathed deep, knowing that in four minutes, when he did not obey the order of "brooms out", his cell would be opened.

As he sank deeper and deeper into dream, it was with a concentration of his will upon one point—the handkerchief, which, if smelled by anyone, would ruin all; and finally, as he drew the last gasp of consciousness, he waved it languidly from him under the shelf; then, with a sigh, was gone.

He had known that he must have about his body the unmistakable signs of an abnormal condition in order to sleep a night in the infirmary—which was what he wanted. And thither, when shakings and the bull's-eye had sufficiently tested him, he was swung away, and the doctor's assistant summoned.

Hogarth's pupils were hurriedly examined, his heartbeat tested; and the freshman frowned, smelling an odour which, in another place, might have been chloroform, but here was pharyngitis; and he muttered, "Digitalis, perhaps…."

From a table Hogarth was swung to a bed by two of those well-behaved convicts who act as hospital-orderlies, and there two hours later had all his wits about him, and a racking headache.

His first thought was his boots—expecting to find them under his stretcher, and himself in flannels; but he had them still on, and also his work-clothes, humanity to the sick in the first stages not being in the Colmoor code.

He spent half an hour in stealthily tearing a square foot from his shirt-tail; then, weary and sick, went to sleep.

When, soon after 3 A.M. his eyes again opened, all was still. He lay in a long room, rather dim, in the midst of a row of stretchers which were shut in by bars containing locks and gates, and on the other side of the room a row of stretchers, shut in by bars. At a table in the middle, on which were bottles, lint, graduated glasses, sat a warder, with outstretched legs and fallen head: near him, standing listless, a convict hospital-orderly, who continually edged nearer the stove; and, half-way down the room, another.

Occasionally there were calls from the sick-beds—whispered shouts— apologetic and stealthy, as of men guiltily conscious of the luxury of being ill; but neither night-warder nor orderlies made undue haste to hear these summonses. There was, beside, an octagonal clock, which ticked excessively in the stillness, as though the whole place belonged to it.

Hogarth took off his boots under his blanket, and from them took out the vials; then, sitting up, commenced to call the warder, at the same time wetting the torn piece of shirt with some of the fluid.

"All right, I'm coming—shut up!" said the warder, but did not come.

So Hogarth grew loud; and the warder, presently rousing his drowsy bulk, unlocked the gate of that compartment, as Hogarth said to himself: "Do it handy…"

And as the warder stooped, Hogarth clapped the rag upon his mouth and nose. A struggle followed a muffled sob, both standing upright now, till the warder began to paw the air, sank, toppled upon the bed, whereupon Hogarth slipped into the blanket again, and called out in the voice of the warder: "Come here, Barrows—see if this man is dead ".

He had now drawn the warder over him, holding up his chest with one arm, had also poured chloroform upon the rag, and when the convict- orderly came, Hogarth, by means of a short struggle, had him asleep, then seized the warder's truncheon and keys, and ran out in his stockinged feet.

At that sight, the sick, the dying, the two rows of stretchers, were up on elbow, gazing with grins. To the second convict-orderly who came running to meet him Hogarth hissed: "Not a word—or I brain you with this! If I tie your feet, you won't have to answer for anything. Come along…."

He was an old fellow, and when he realized the impending truncheon, the menace of Hogarth's eyes, and the silence of the warder, he permitted himself to be dragged toward Hogarth's stretcher; and his feet were quickly knotted in his own stockings.

Now again Hogarth ran: but not many steps, when he felt himself tapped on the back, and, glancing in a horror of alarm, saw one of the two patients who had occupied with him his cage of bars—a wiry, long-faced Cockney shop-boy, who had had his ankle crushed by a rock at the quarry.

"Are you off?" he asked.

"That's my business—"

"No, you don't. Part, or I give the alarm".

"What is it? Do you want to come with me?"

"That's about it".

"But—your foot's sick, you fool".

"You'll carry me in your awms, as a father beareth his children…."

"You are cool! What are you in for?"

"Murder, my son-red, grim, gory murder!"

"Guilty?"

"Guilty, ya'as. What do you think?"

"Then you may go to hell".

" 'Ell is it? I'm there : and if I linger longer loo in it, you linger, too, swelp me Gawd!"

Hogarth was nonplussed.

"But the foot…"

"Never mind the foot . Foot's still good for a run. Do we go shares?"

"Come along, then".

"But you ain't 'alf up to snuff, I can see, though you are pretty smart in your own way: I'd 'ave felt the confidence of a son in you, if you 'adn't overlooked that wine—"

To Hogarth's dismay, he turned back to the table, put a black bottle, half full, to his lips, and with tilts anc stoppages set to gulp it, while eager jokes, touched with jealousy, began to jeer from the beds.

"Lawd Gawd, that was good!" said the Cockney with upturned eyes, "and what do I behold?—broth, ye gawds!"

Now a saucepan of cold broth was at his lips; and not till he had drunk all did he run after Hogarth into the other arm of the ward, where one of the keys unlocked the door at its end, and they passed out into the infirmary exercise-hall, now dark, Hogarth dragging the Cockney, who limped, and kept up a prattle of tipsy ribaldries.

Then, emerging upon a platform of slabs, from which the jump into the infirmary exercise-yard is twenty feet, Hogarth leapt. The Cockney stood hesitating on the brink.

"As sure as my name's 'Arris, you'll be the bloomin' ruin of me…" he said aloud.

" Sh-h-h ", went Hogarth, "one more word, and I leave or knock you speechless".

Now at last Harris jumped, Hogarth catching him, and they ran across the yard northerly, Harris complaining of cold, being in hospital flannels, his feet bare, Hogarth bitterly regretting the burden of this companion, meditating on deserting him. Accordingly, when they had run down a passage, and were confronted by a great gate, spiked a-top, Hogarth said: "I'll get up first", and, forcing the small end of the truncheon into the space at the hinges, he got foot-hold from which he caught the top hinge and scaled, a feat of which he considered Harris incapable; and, instead of helping him up, leapt down with a new feeling of lightness, hearing from the other side "Dastardly treachery…!"

Again he ran through dark night wild with winds wheeling snowflakes; and, seeing in the unpaved court in which he now was a clothes-line supported on stakes, he seized both, to run with them to where the court is bounded by the great outer wall: for though it is thirty feet of sheer rock, the mere fact of stakes being found there, and of a vanished rope, would furnish grounds for the belief that he had scaled it: he therefore leant the stakes against it, and kept the rope.

About to turn, he felt his back touched; and, spinning round, saw
Harris panting.

"There's a friend that sticketh closer than any bloomin' brother, Mr. 76", Harris said. "Try that game on again, and I give myself up; and where will you be then?"

"You silly wretch!" said Hogarth: "before I am free, there'll be a hundred difficulties and pains. Are you prepared to undergo them? You couldn't, if you tried".

"Bear ye one another's burdens, it is ", said Harris: "with thee by me what need I fear? Lawd Gawd, that wine was good! it's got into my poor 'ead, I believe. On, general; where thou leadest, I will follow".

Hogarth looked at him, half inclined to knock him down, and half to shelter, and save.

"All right", said he. "Can you climb?"

"Climb, yes, like a bag of monkeys".

"Come, then".

He mounted three low steps before four doors at the north end of the infirmary buildings, where, as he had observed from the moor, a spout runs up the wall at its east end; and up this he began to climb.

"'Old on!" called Harris: "I can't do that lot".

" Sh-h-h! —you must!—come—"

Harris made three attempts before he reached the first footrest, and there stuck, vowing in loud whispers that he would no further go, and Hogarth had to come back, and encourage him up. Finally, they went running southward on the leads between the infirmary roof and its coping, and had hardly reached the south end when a whistle shrilled, and they saw a warder run across the exercise-yard with a lantern.

"Stoop!" whispered Hogarth.

Crouching, they stole along the south coping, and thence dropped to a flat cistern-top, Hogarth, with a painful " Sh-h-h ", catching Harris as he fell, for the signs of alarm and activity every moment increased.

Up a series of little brick steps, the base of a chimney over the kitchen—then across another stretch of leads beneath which is the tailor's shop—then, stealing in shadow under the beams of overhanging eaves by a garret window, behind which was a light, and someone moving—then a spring of three feet between two cornices— then a running walk at a height of a hundred feet along a beading four inches wide, holding on with the upstretched arms—then, with course changed from south to east, along more leads—then a climb of ten feet up a glazed main—and now they were skulking behind the coping of the great No. 2 prison.

Now, contiguous with the back of the bath-house is a wall which runs from No. 2 prison to the bell-tower, dividing the bath-house yard from the bell-yard; but the top is not horizontal, being lower at the bell-tower end, neither is it broad, and to reach it from the prison coping a drop of seven feet is necessary: this Harris refused to do. "Not for Joe", said he: "I've already run my 'ead into enough perils by land and sea on your account. If this is what you've brought me out moonlighting here for…."

Hogarth did not wait, but disappeared over the side: and Harris, after five minutes' pleadings, followed. They then drew on the belly to the bell-tower; and here again Harris refused the leap to the conductor. When finally he dared, and Hogarth sought to steady him, as he came sprawling upon the rod, both went gliding down, till checked by a staple.

But they climbed again; Hogarth undid the half-fused string of tin from the conductor, swung to the laundry coping, caught Harris, leapt to the window, drew up Harris; and was ensconced far up among the beams in thick darkness in the belfry an hour before daybreak.

At this time the great gates were open, and the moor being scoured for the two. eNKloM8b+SJ6n0UAlWs2pRPNX8cjQ411Fyn9Sq1OU4ariVivcAYzjvknLh6ki1wp