On the morning of his previous visit he had taken all the bearings with reference to an expedition in the darkness, and so, feeling his way along the hall, he had little difficulty in finding the cell in which he had left his old friend.
Jim tried the door, but found it locked. His great fear was that the lock would be changed, but it had not been meddled with, and had either been furnished with a new key, or had been locked with a skeleton. He slipped the stolen key in, and the bolt slid back. Opening the outer door, he tried the inner, but the key did not fit the lock. Here was a difficulty not entirely unexpected, but seeming to be insurmountable. He quietly went back to the door of entrance, and as quietly closed it, that no sound of violence might reach and wake the inmates of the house across the road. Then he returned, and whispered in a low voice to the inmate:
"Paul Benedict, give us your benediction."
"Jim," responded the man in a whisper, so light that it could reach no ear but his own.
"Don't make no noise, not even if I sh'd make consid'able," said Jim.
Then, grasping the bars with both hands, he gave the door a sudden pull, into which he put all the might of his huge frame. A thousand pounds would not have measured it, and the door yielded, not at the bolt, but at the hinges. Screws deeply imbedded were pulled out bodily. A second lighter wrench completed the task, and the door was noiselessly set aside, though Jim was trembling in every muscle.
"Here's the robe that Abram sent ye," said Jim, throwing over the poor man's shoulders an ample blanket; and putting one of his large arms around him, he led him shuffling out of the hall, and shut and bolted the door.
He had no sooner done this, than the bedlam inside broke loose. There were yells, and howls, and curses, but Jim did not stop for these. Dizzied with his effort, enveloped in thick darkness, and the wind which preceded the approaching shower blowing a fierce gale, he was obliged to stop a moment to make sure that he was walking in the right direction. He saw the lights of the village, and, finding the road, managed to keep on it until he reached the horse, that had become uneasy under the premonitory tumult of the storm. Lifting Benedict into the wagon as if he had been a child, he wrapped him warmly, and put the boy in behind him, to kneel and see that his father did not fall out. Then he turned the horse around, and started toward Number Nine. The horse knew the road, and was furnished with keener vision than the man who drove him. Jim was aware of this, and letting the reins lie loose upon his back, the animal struck into a long, swinging trot, in prospect of home and another "pail iv oats."