"What friends can I have in this place?" thought the young trooper, as
he nervously chewed the bit of paper to a pulp. At the same time he
was tremulous with a new hope. "Perhaps I can do it," he said, "and
anything will be better than sitting in idleness, with a prospect of
being shot at sunrise."

Standing on his wooden stool he could easily reach the lower end of the
iron bars closing the cell window, and he at once began work on them.
At first he seemed to produce about as much effect as would the gnawing
of a mouse, but after a while his tiny saw was buried in the tough
iron. Then footsteps approached, and Ridge had barely time to fling
himself on the vile-smelling pallet before a sentry was peering in at
the grating. A ray of light fell where he lay, but fortunately failed
to reach the side on which the barred aperture was located. So the
prisoner made a long bunch of the straw, covered it with his coat, and
placed his water-jug at one end, thus causing the whole to bear a rude
resemblance to a human figure.

After that he worked steadily, only pausing at the sound of footsteps,
but not leaving the scene of his operations. He found that he must cut
two bars instead of only one, and a saw snapped in twain when the first
was but half severed. After that he handled the other with intense
caution, and his heart throbbed painfully with anxiety as the work
neared completion.

For hours he toiled, and he knew that daylight could not be far off
when the second bar was finally cut. To bend it aside took all his
strength, and so occupied was he in doing this that for the first time
that night he heeded not a sound of footsteps in the corridor.