Poor RÁby, he was a prisoner in such surroundings that they would have served for the wildest page of romance. No sound came to him from the outer world, as he lay there chained to the blank wall in his living grave—the underground dungeon whose door no key opened. Yet for all this he was not forgotten.

In the deathlike stillness of the night he heard what sounded like a noise of scratching in the roof of his cell, as if someone were trying to bore through the ceiling.

All at once the sound ceased, and from above he heard a well-remembered voice: "Poor RÁby!" it murmured.

At the sound, a thrill of joy shook the prisoner, in spite of his fetters; it spoke to him of life and hope.

"Can you hear me?" asked the voice.

"Perfectly," answered RÁby.

"Trust in God, He will deliver you, He will not let you be lost. If to-morrow you hear a sound of knocking, give heed. Good-bye."Then there was again stillness. But RÁby slept in his heavy fetters rocked by that hope, as peacefully as a child in its mother's arms.

When he awoke at daybreak, it seemed like a dream, till he was reminded of its reality by a light tapping on the ceiling of his cell.

And then, just over his head, there appeared a long hollow cane thrust down from a small aperture in the roof, and it came lower and lower till it reached his fettered hands.

"Have you got it?" asked the voice. "If so, open it carefully."

RÁby carefully opened the sealed end and found a minute phial of ink, and an equally slender pen made from a crow's feather. Round it was rolled a sheet of paper.

"Write, and I will wait to take it," said the voice, and the prisoner, as might be imagined, was not long in obeying the request of his unseen monitress. Carefully and minutely, in spite of his fettered hand, he traced on the paper a letter to the Emperor, telling him all that had happened, and in the relief of giving this welcome vent to his feelings, he forgot his wretched surroundings. When it was done he rolled up the paper, tucked it in the cane, and pushed it up again through the ceiling.

On the evening of the next day he heard the voice again: "Dear RÁby, take courage. Your letter has gone to Vienna by the Jew Abraham."

RÁby's heart warmed at this news, it would mean at the most only a week more of his present captivity—and for that time he had bread and water enough.

Meantime, before the said week came to an end, his Excellency the governor sent for Mr. LaskÓy.

"We are in a nice quandary, my friend, and you will have to get us out of it; hear what has happened," and his Excellency paused as if to emphasise what was to follow. "Three days after RÁby was imprisoned, the Emperor summoned me to Vienna. I went as fast as posts could carry me, to hear, as his first question: 'What have the authorities done with RÁby?'

"I told him that Mathias RÁby had already had a fair hearing before the magistracy, but that owing to a dangerous sickness which had suddenly overtaken him, he was now in the hands of the doctor, pending being confronted with his accusers. The Emperor did not interrupt me, but when I had done, out he comes with a letter written by your prisoner in spite of his irons and fast barred door, setting forth his grievances to his master in very plain terms. And I can assure you he didn't spare either of us."

LaskÓy was petrified with amazement. "That means," pursued his Excellency, "that RÁby has found ways and means of writing to the Kaiser from his dungeon. When I had read the letter through, the Emperor said: 'Mark my words, if Mathias RÁby is not released from prison by the day after to-morrow (you will be back in Pesth by then), I shall give orders that his custodians be themselves arrested and put in the Dark Tower for the rest of their lives on bread and water. So you see what you have to reckon with, and the best thing you can do is to set the prisoner free at once.'"

The lieutenant did not want urging, he rode to the prison in hot haste, and demanded to see the head-gaoler. No sooner had Janosics appeared, bearing his huge bunch of keys, than LaskÓy sprang at him straight away like a wild cat, seized him by the ears, and banged his head against the door unmercifully, till the keys rattled again in his hands.

"Take that for your pains," he cried, "I'll teach you how to look after your prisoners! What do you mean by letting RÁby write to the Emperor from his dungeon?"

The castellan was dumbfoundered with pain and amazement. "All I can say is, your worship," he cried, rubbing his head, "that RÁby must be in league with the Devil."

And though all the authorities of Pesth put their heads together, they could not solve the mystery. The only thing they were clear upon was that Janosics deserved fifty strokes with the lash, a punishment he promptly received.

The following day his Excellency went to the Assembly House, and two letters were put into his hands by LaskÓy with a crafty smile. Both were in RÁby's handwriting. The one was dated from Szent-Endre; it contained an expression of the writer's gratitude for his release by the Pesth authorities, and his willingness to abide henceforth by the laws of the land. Further, it announced his determination to withdraw from public life and attend to his private concerns, and the writer begged that the accompanying letter, if it met with the governor's approbation, might be, after reading, forwarded by special messenger to the Emperor.

The second missive contained a formal admission by the writer that he had been led astray by false evidence, that the story of the treasure-chest was a lying invention of the deceased "pope"; further it expressed his regret at having caused the Pesth magistracy so much inconvenience, and his determination not to return to Vienna but to pass the rest of his life in the country, to which end he begged the pension allotted to him might be sent to him at Szent-Endre.

His Excellency immediately dispatched this missive to Vienna, and drove back home. You do not imprison Pesth people so easily in the Dark Tower.

Yes, it was all very cleverly arranged, but perhaps the reader will not be surprised to learn that RÁby still languished in his dungeon a closer captive than ever. At the discovery of RÁby's letter to the Emperor, a contingent of heydukes had visited the prisoner in his cell, searched the dungeon for ink and paper, but in vain, for the thick rime which glazed the ceiling, effectually hid the small hole at the top. The result was that, failing to get any light on the mystery, RÁby was fettered closer than before, the door barred and sealed with the lieutenant's own private seal, and the prisoner was once more left to the solitude of his cell.

And as for the supposed letters, why they were easily accounted for by the fact that an accomplished forger then in prison, who was anxious to please his judges to the best of his ability, which was great, had written them at their bidding.

So RÁby waited till his good angel again provided him, by means of the hole in the ceiling, with ink and paper in the cane, but this time he only wrote the words, "I am still here, your Majesty," and signed it with his blood, for his foot was bleeding profusely through the chain cutting into it. But even this was assuaged by his protectress by means of a linen bandage concealed in the cane, with which RÁby was enabled to bind up his ankle.

Before the week was out, his dungeon-door was opened one morning, and an unusually large allowance of bread, and two pitchers of water were thrust into his cell. Then the man he had seen once before, whom he recognised as a mason, appeared with his assistants, and with their help, took his cell door off its hinges, and proceeded to brick it up. And through RÁby's mind ran old stories he had read of people being walled up alive in the Middle Ages, and a shuddering horror fell upon him, at the fate reserved for him.