“Father Hamilton,” said I, when my cord was fastened, “with your permission I'll try it first. I want to make it sure that my seamanship on the sloop _Sarah_, of Ayr, has not deserted me to the extent that I cannot come down a rope without a ratline or tie a bowling knot.”
“Certainly, Paul, certainly,” said he, quite eagerly, so that I was tempted for a second to think he gladly postponed his own descent from sheer terror.
I threw over the free end of the cord and crouched upon the beak of the gable to lower myself.
“Well, Paul,” said his reverence in a broken voice. “Let us say 'good-bye' in case aught should happen ere we are on the same level again.”
“Oh!” said I, impatient, “that's the true _croque-mort_ spirit indeed! Why, Father, it isn't--it isn't--” I was going to say it was not a gallows I was venturing on, but the word stuck in my throat, for a certain thought that sprung to me of how nearly in my own case it had been to the very gallows, and his reverence doubtless saw some delicacy, for he came promptly to my help.
“Not a priest's promise--made to be broken, you would say, good Paul,” said he. “I promised the merriest of jaunts over Europe in a coach, and here my scrivener is hanging in the reins! Pardon, dear Scotland, _milles pardons_ and good-bye and good luck.” And at that he made to embrace me.
“Here's a French ceremony just about nothing at all,” I thought, and began my descent. The priest lay on his stomach upon the ridge. As I sank, with my eyes turned upwards, I could see his hair blown by the wind against a little patch of stars, that was the only break in the Ethiopia of the sky. He seemed to follow my progress breathlessly, and when I gained the other roof and shook the cord to tell him so he responded by a faint clapping of his hands.
“Art all right, lad?” he whispered down to me, and I bade him follow.
“Good-night, Paul, good-bye, and God bless you!” he whispered. “Get out of this as quick as you can; 'tis more than behemoth could do in a month of dark nights, and so I cut my share of the adventure. One will do't when two (and one of them a hogshead) will die in trying to do't.”
Here was a pretty pickle! The man's ridiculous regard for my safety outweighed his natural inclinations, though his prospects in the prison of Bicêtre were blacker than my own, having nothing less dreadful than an execution at the end of them. He had been merely humouring me so far--and such a brave humouring in one whose flesh was in a quaking of alarms all the time he slid along the roof!