"Come along, you fool!" shouted Turnbull with a sudden and
furious energy. "I see it all now, and it's the best stroke of
luck in the world. You pulled out that iron handle that had
screwed up his cell, and it somehow altered the machinery and
opened all the doors."

Seizing MacIan by the elbow he bundled him bodily out into the
open corridor and ran him on till they saw daylight through a
half-darkened window.

"All the same," said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary
conversation, "he did ask you whether he could help you."

All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the
heart of that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour
before the fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world.
They did not even know what hour of the day it was; and when,
turning a corner, they saw the bare tunnel of the corridor end
abruptly in a shining square of garden, the grass burning in that
strong evening sunshine which makes it burnished gold rather than
green, the abrupt opening on to the earth seemed like a hole
knocked in the wall of heaven. Only once or twice in life is it
permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from outside,
and feel existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet begun.
As they found this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth
they both had simultaneously the sensation of being babes unborn,
of being asked by God if they would like to live upon the earth.
They were looking in at one of the seven gates of Eden.