Wheeling the bedstead very gently on its noiseless castors a few inches
from the wall, I insinuated myself between them, and, sheltered by the
head-board, loosened again the slightly-adhering covering of paper that
concealed the door, and fitted into the key-hole the well-oiled wooden
key, which once before had proved its efficiency. It did not fail me
now, in my hour of extremity, for a moment later I had turned and
removed it from its socket, stepped forth upon the landing, and relocked
without the door of my prison; but, perhaps, with too much of nervous
haste, too little caution, for, to my inexpressible confusion, the
handle of the instrument of my emancipation remained in my hand, broken
off at the lock, and useless forever more.
In delaying probable pursuit from within, I had cut off all possibility
of my own retreat in case of failure. My bridges were literally burned
behind me, and I had no alternative left between flight and detection.
And yet there was something in the situation that, inconsistently
enough, made me smile, albeit with a trembling heart.
I shook my head drearily, as a couplet from Collins's "Camel-Driver,"
with its strange appropriateness, irresistibly crossed my brain.
Why is it that, in times like these, such conceits beset us, such
comparisons arise? Does the quality called presence of mind find root in
the same source that impels us to apt quotation?--
"What if the lion in his rage I meet?
Oft in the dust I see his printed feet.
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