“Goodbye, don’t cry, back by-and-by.” It was known in prison that all the peasants in the neighbourhood had been roused. All suspicious places, all the woods and ravines were being watched.

“Foolishness!” said the convicts, laughing. “They must have some friend they are staying with now.”

“No doubt they have,” said the others. “They are not fools; they would have got everything ready beforehand.”

They went further than this in their suppositions; they began to say that the runaways were still perhaps in the outskirts of the town, living somewhere in a cellar till the excitement was over and their hair had grown, that they would stay there six months or a year and then go on.