If you think, M.de Tignonville, to take him there--" "Patience, Monsieur, you have not heard me," Perrot interposed.

"I know it after another fashion.

Do you remember a rill of water which runs through the great yard and the stables ?" La Tribe nodded.
"Grated with iron at either end and no passage for so much as a dog?
You do?
Well, Monsieur, I have hunted rats there, and where the water passes under the wall is a culvert, a man's height in length.

In it is a stone, one of those which frame the grating at the entrance, which a strong man can remove--and the man is in!" "Ay, in! But where ?" La Tribe asked, his eyebrows drawn together.
"Well said, Monsieur, where ?" Perrot rejoined in a tone of triumph.
"There lies the point.

In the stables, where will be sleeping men, and a snorer on every truss?
No, but in a fairway between two stables where the water at its entrance runs clear in a stone channel; a channel deepened in one place that they may draw for the chambers above with a rope and a bucket.