Moreover, though he held the highest offices with the king, he thought that freedom was better than delights, and burned with a mighty desire to visit his country and learn his lineage.

But, knowing that the queen had provided sufficient guards to see that no prisoner escaped, he saw that he must approach by craft where he could not arrive by force.

So he plaited one of those baskets of rushes and withies, shaped like a man, with which countrymen used to scare the birds from the corn, and put a live dog in it; then he took off his own clothes, and dressed it in them, to give a more plausible likeness to a human being.

Then he broke into the private treasury of the king, took out the money, and hid himself in places of which he alone knew.
Meantime Gunn, whom he had told to conceal the absence of his friend, took the basket into the palace and stirred up the dog to bark; and when the queen asked what this was, he answered that Jarmerik was out of his mind and howling.

She, beholding the effigy, was deceived by the likeness, and ordered that the madman should be cast out of the house.
Then Gunn took the effigy out and put it to bed, as though it were his distraught friend.