Note 22 — Chapter XVII · IN WHICH GREEK JOINS GREEK.

I am conscious, madam, that you’ll be justly indignant with me for leaving you so long in suspense after the affecting news contained in my last letter, though indeed I have put off writing from day to day in hopes to find something certain to communicate to you, but in vain. On the night after my letter was despatched, Mirza Shaw attended me to the house of which he had spoken, both of us wearing the Moorish dress, and we traced its extent and examined the outside walls, which are high and in good repair, and (as is common with the houses here) destitute of any openings by which a secret entrance might be effected. The only means that suggested itself to me for scaling them was a ladder of ropes furnished with a hook at one end, which might be thrown over the summit of the wall, and catching there afford us an ascent, but the Tartar objected very pertinently that without knowing who was to be found on the other side of the wall we might well terminate our lives and our hopes of rescuing Miss Freyne at once in our first attempt. Other expedients we discussed, without finding any that commended itself to our prudence, and we left it at last that Mirza Shaw was to linger in the vicinity of the house, and representing himself as a boxwaller,[22] insinuate himself into the confidence of the servants, and so perhaps gain access to Nezmennessa Beeby herself, or at least discover who she may really be.