These fellows looked so unworried that he probably suspected
they had a well-laid plan to escape. The jailer was further surprised
to hear the two prisoners singing--actually singing some of their
hymns, though they must have been in great discomfort.
Away into the night they sang. The other prisoners heard them and
marvelled. Surely these new jail-birds had something which they, the
old ones, did not possess. The jailer, as he retired, doubtless
remarked to his wife: "Well, there's something uncanny about those two
men; here it is midnight and they are singing and going on like two
schoolboys on a picnic excursion!"
He hadn't been asleep long, when a brick fell out of the mantelpiece
near the jailer's bed and the furniture about the room began to dance
a jig. Mrs. Jailer screamed and the children began to cry in terror.
The door creaked and pushed off its hinges, falling with a slam-bang.
The jailer jumped and landed in the middle of the floor. A flash of
lightning put a photograph on his staring eye that he never got rid of
to his dying day. The prison walls were cracked and falling, the doors
were down and the dazed prisoners were groping about.
Alas, poor jailer, the thing of all most dreaded was about to
happen--his prisoners would escape! Earthquakes were bad enough, but
the sudden thought he got of himself answering to the governor next
morning with his life for the escape of those put in his charge was
more than he could bear.
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