“This will not do,” he said earnestly.  “I must arouse myself.  Let me think, what have I heard that prisoners do?  In the first place they try to escape; and some have escaped from places as difficult as Loches.  Well, that is one thing to be thought very seriously about.  In the next place, I have heard of their making pets of spiders and all sorts of things.  Well, I may come to that, but at present I don’t like spiders well enough to make pets of them; besides I don’t see any spiders to make pets of.  Then some prisoners have carved walls, but I have no taste for carving.

“I might keep my muscles in order and my health good by exercise with the chair and table; get to hold them out at arm’s length, lift the table with one hand, and so on.  Yes, all sorts of exercise might be continued in that way, and the more I take exercise the better I shall sleep at night and enjoy my meals.  Yes, with nothing else to do I might become almost a Samson here.

“There, now my whole time is marked out—­escape from prison, and exercise.  I’ll try the last first, and then think over the other.”

For a long time Rupert worked away with his furniture until he had quite exhausted himself; then feeling happier and better than he had done since he was shut up, he began to think of plans of escape.  The easiest way would of course be to knock down and gag the gaoler, and to escape in the clothes; but this plan he put aside at once, as it was morally certain that he should be no nearer to his escape after reaching the courtyard of the prison, than he was in the cell.  There remained then the chimney, the loophole, and the solid wall.

The chimney was the first to disappear from the calculation.  Looking up it, Rupert saw that it was crossed by a dozen iron bars, the height too was very great, and even when at the top the height was immense to descend to the fosse.

The loophole was next examined.  It was far too narrow to squeeze through, and was crossed by three sets of bars.  The chance of widening the narrow loophole and removing the bars without detection was extreme; besides, Rupert had a strong idea that the loophole looked into the courtyard.

Finally he came to the conclusion, that if an escape was to be made it must be by raising a flag of the floor, tunnelling between his room and that underneath it, and working out through the solid wall.  It would be a tremendous work, for the loophole showed him that the wall must be ten feet thick; still, as he said to himself, it will be at least something to do and to think about, and even if it takes five years and comes to nothing, it will have been useful.

Thus resolved, Rupert went to work, and laboured steadily.  His exercise with the chair and table succeeded admirably, and after six months he was able to perform feats of strength with them that surprised himself.  With his scheme for escape he was less fortunate.  Either his tools were faulty, or the stones he had to work upon were too compact and well built, but beyond getting up the flag, making a hole below it in the hard cement which filled in the space between the floor, large enough to bury a good sized cat, Rupert achieved nothing.