reel across the cellar to the rope-ladder, but he cheered the men above with the news that another twelve hours with the chisel would give them their release. And, after a few hours' sleep, the wonderful man went down again in the dawn of Monday, and crawled with his chisel into that reeking pit, the staunch McDonald following. It was the seventeenth day of labour in this new tunnel.

Noon, evening, night-each weary hour of that seventeenth day saw the stout-hearted worker at his fearful task. Midnight drew near, but the stars were still veiled from his aching eyes. His strength was almost spent, and McDonald, at the tunnel's mouth, fifty-three feet distant, could waft him only the feeblest current of polluted air. So narrow was So narrow was the passage that he could get no relief by shifting his position, and on the stroke of midnight his exhaustion had reached the degree at which food becomes impossible. How long-how long? McDonald, his sole helper, was at the last stage of weariness, yet his exertions had been as nothing compared with those of Rose. Those last minutes must have seemed to both of them "the eternal years of God."

Just then, for Rose at least, the crisis came. He felt that he was dying of suffocation. McDonald, straining with all his might, could send

not another breath of air along the deadly tunnel, and, not even to save himself from suffocation, could Rose crawl back to the entrance. Fiftythree feet-five thousand leagues-the one as easy as the other! In the wrestle with death he turned upon his back, and beat with his weak fists against the roof of his narrow grave. Heavens, he dashed his two fists through it! He felt the air upon his face! He wrenched himself round, a live man, and thrust his head and shoulders out into the yard. What a draught of air was that! And there above him, in the clear, cold sky, was the star his mind had imaged in the horrid pit. The strength flowed back into his veins. He raised himself through the broken earth, and as he gained his feet in the yard he heard the call of the sentinel, as it were a call to himself: "Half-past one, and ALL'S WELL!"

Yes, all was well, for the chisel of Providence had brought the tunnel to an issue at an easy spot.

A gate, fastened by a swinging bar, opened directly on the street. And when Colonel Rose had mastered the trick of the bar, and peered into the silent street, and seen that there was just space of time to walk away while the sentry was returning on his beat, he was satisfied, and lowered himself again, feet foremost, into the

tunnel, drawing a convenient plank over the opening in the yard.

It was nearly three o'clock on the morning of Tuesday when, mounting the rope ladder for the last time, he sought out Hamilton, and told him that Libby was open. Hamilton had seen Rose steal away on the morning of Monday, stumbling, with the sleep still on him, over the sleeping ranks on the floor, and had scarcely thought to meet him in life again. It was his business to rouse the sleepers then, and to send them down to meet Rose in the dining-room. Rose and Hamilton were for starting at once, but the others urged delay, to gain the advantage of a whole night for escape beyond the fortifications of Richmond.

Reluctantly Rose and Hamilton consented, and the decision was probably a wise one.

The party met in Rat Hell at seven on the evening of Tuesday, February 9, and Rose, Hamilton, and McDonald led the way through the tunnel. Whether the last man going out had left a message behind him, or whether the inmates of the prison were aroused by sympathy, was never known; but by nine o'clock the word was flashed through every ward that the Colonel had escaped, with a dozen of his friends. There was a rush for the hole at the fire-place, and one hundred and nine of

the prisoners succeeded in slipping through it. Every man got clear away, but forty-eight were by and by retaken and brought back. Of this number was Colonel Rose, who was exchanged for a Confederate Colonel in the last days of April, and rejoined his regiment on July 6, 1864.

THE CRIMINAL TATTOOED

I

FROM pole to pole, Darwin observes, man has tattooed himself. Why? For tattooing is painful and dangerous; ending sometimes in death.

An Australian savage, asked by a traveller why he knocked out two useful teeth from his little boy's upper jaw, answered that the Spirits thought it pretty and would have it so. A benevolent spirit named Muramura, having accidentally or of purpose disfigured the first child in this way, was pleased with the effect, and commanded "that the like should be done to every male and female child for ever." To this day the Pelew Islanders maintain that no one is received into heaven who has not had the septum of his nose perforated. In Greenland there was a very old belief that girls who had not been stitched with black thread between the eyes and on the chin "would be turned into train tubs, and placed under the lamps in heaven, in the land of souls." Thus has it been assumed in many countries that tattoo marks on the human body were originally graven there by