The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 286: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CHILD OF WATERLOO, 288 before he can make any noise, or give any alarm, and you have only to present yourself at the gates, and you will be permitted to go out at your pieasure.” ; “Yes, that will, indeed, be the case,” said the priest; ‘therefore, hasten, and T will retard the discovery as much as I can.” There was no time for words; the mendicant, or Sternholde, as we will call him, aided by the priest, soon removed the bars, and then he got through into a kind of narrow yard, near which was fixed a ladder. In an instant he ascended, and after much danger he gor to the roof. Workmen had been making repairs, and thus the ladder had been left, but it was believed in a secure position. In the meantime, Sternholde had scarcely got out of the cell before the turnkey came and knocked at the door, saying: ‘‘Time is up; are you ready, Mr. Andrea What’s-your-name ? are you ready to leave ?” “* Not yet,” replied the monk, who sat muttering some prayers, which the turnkey thought was giving absolution, and listening to catch the words, but, finding that he could not, he went away without having his curiosity gratified, and left Sternholde to escape, if he could. He met with greater difficulties than he had anticipated, and more than once he gave it up as a bad job, and thought of re- turning, or of throwing himself from the summit, and thus put an end to the life struggle he was undergoing. The turnkey came again and again, for the third time, when he became impatient, and entered the cell, and before he could express his-surprise at the disappearance of the prisoner, he was seized by the throat, and the monk, grappling with him, endeav- ored to throw him back upon his head and stun him; but the first surprise over, the turnkey, in his turn, grappled with his antagonist, and being the stronger man, the priest was thrown down, and then an alarm was given. Several turnkeys came running in, and the priest was quickly secured in irons; the whole prison was alarmed, and a search was commenced in a very short time. It was surprising how quickly they detected the route of the mendicant, and in a few minutes more they were beside him before he was aware of it, for all his faculties were concentrated upon the means of getting safely out of a position of the most imminent peril, which he had got into in bis endeavors to es- cape. | He was quickly seized and thrown down and secured afresh with irons, despite his most vehement and desperate struggles. ‘‘' We have you safely enough now,” said one of the turnkeys, ‘and it’s quite useless to attempt to struggle; you had better take it quietly, like a man.” Then came the fierce reply; the denunciation of the whole human race, the frantic attempts at self-destruction, the shout. and laughter and the exultation in the admission that he had killed hundreds of men; that he-had baffled them al] for years, comicbooks. com