Relentlessly, Faria chiseled away at the tightly packed earth, mechanically he wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm. A unexpected encounter with a rather large boulder pushed back his estimated date for escape by at least eight months. He would have to move around it and hope that he didn’t encounter another. Fourteen years and he’d managed fifty feet – a feat which gave him courage to continue. Any day now, any day and he would break through… and once out he’d have the treasure to console him.

Faria's chisel hit stone with a spark. Another rock or was it part of the foundation, he rapped slowly along the wall of earth, listening for the softer thud of earth. It must be part of the fortress. Tap. Tap. He felt along the barrier. Stone, too smooth to be natural. He'd dug too high - if he continued thus he would be heard. He felt along the ceiling of the hole. Tap. Tap... and at once he heard an eerie echo from beyond. He raised his hand to test whether his hearing was playing tricks on him and... Tap. Tap. No way could it have been an echo. Some jailor or convict was on the other side, trying to communicate. Neither was a good sign. A jailor meant an investigation... and convicts couldn't be trusted. He crouched there not moving a muscle as he listened for any sign that of who his comrade of the wall could be.

Faria looked up and scratched his head, beginning doubt that whoever was communicating with him was a guard. But if the man was a prisoner here, he was likely disreputable. But there was a note of desperation in the man’s efforts which reminded him of his early days when escape seemed far away, Faria repeated back the stranger’s message. “Thank the lord!” Though the response was muffled the voice sounded young, if somewhat unused.

“Who is it that evokes the lord’s name?” Faria demanded. A man who calls upon the lord couldn’t be all bad.

“One who uses the talent the lord has given him to take fate in his own hands,” Faria replied cautiously. The man spoke French without accent, which lead Faria to believe him a native, but it was simple enough to train one’s self to appear other than what one was. “What’s is your name and country and what crime had you done to be placed here?”

“Most curious…” Faria mused. Imprisoned without a trial. One would think they had returned to the days of the lettre de cache. It was unconscionable! “How long have you been here?”

"Since the 28th of February, 1815."

“And you say you know not why you were arrested? Tell me the circumstances of your arrest and imprisonment.”

Faria listened carefully to every word, considering every angle – seeing possibilities. The story was too fantastic to be a ruse. If anything it sounded like the boy was the victim of the ambitions of others. “It is a strange tale you’ve told me,” he said finally.

“It is the uncertainty of not knowing my crime that is such torture."

“I can imagine.” He scratched his heavily furred chin thoughtfully.

"I would never wish you away my friend, but I do wish I could see your face, to prove to myself that I am not a madman talking to phantoms." The voice was almost pleading. It was a considerable request, but natural for anyone who had been deprived so long of human contact. Faria thoughts battled against each other…

“Have you any tools with which to dig?”

Faria jumped as he heard something smash against the floor above him. While the noise was unexpected, he could easily guess what had happened: lacking the necessary equipment the young man had found a way to remedy that. "Yes, I have something with which to dig," the young man called back, confirming Faria's impression.

"Excellent," then reached up and tapped on the ceiling of his tunnel. "Can you hear where this is coming from? Tell me what is above it."

“Excellent, excellent,” Faria repled, considering. “Is it visible from your doorway? Could the jailor easily see the spot? What we need is a spot not so readily noticeable where the loose stone would not draw attention.”

Listening to the furious pounding above, Faria took a step back. At that rate, he was likely to kill himself. "Listen, you must not kill yourself. Time is something we have in abundance here. And you must be careful that you are not heard."

Faria felt a fair amount of dirt fall on his face as Edmond progressed and Faria helped him from the underside. A man of such spirit would be valuable, if he was trustworthy. “You are close,” he called, then added, but the jailor will be coming soon with supper, so you must hide your work. Take the dirt you have loosen and disperse it across the room. He must suspect nothing.”

Faria returned quickly to his cell, hid the evidence of his work and just barely threw himself onto his cot when the gaoler arrived. The man said nothing, having long ago grown to dislike the old Abbé and his curious habits, merely staying long enough to feed the prisoner and satisfy himself that the man was still breathing. Faria waited but a fraction of a minute after the gaoler left to return to his tunnel and listen as the jailor questioned his neighbor. Perhaps half a minute passed, then Faria heard the scraping of the cot being shoved aside, then a hesitant tap. “Don’t worry, I have not abandoned you,” Faria called back.

From underneath, Faria scraped away at the earth just below where his neighbour worked, widening the hole so that a man might pass through. After hours he felt a brick give way and a sound of excitement from the other side. “The work will be easier now, but do not damage the bricks. You will need to fix them back in place afterward.”

As Faria promised, the work went faster. Five, six hours after the initial block gave way, they had created a hole wide enough for Faria to pass through. Carefully, cautiously Faria popped his head and shoulder out of the hole. “Impressive work for but a single day,” he told the young man who looked at him with relief and incredulity.

Faria smiled in amusement, "As real as anything in this place. The key to fending off the madness is to remember who you are and what you are, young man." The fact was that he was still very young, and in the time Faria had to think it through there seemed no good reason for the young man to be here save that Providence delivered him to Faria to help in his work. Faria looked over the cell and frowned, finally embracing the truth he had avoided: he had been burrowing in the wrong direction. "This is all wrong, the tunnel should have been working towards the outer wall," he finally said.

"D'If is built on an island," Faria explained. "If a man burrows in on direction long enough, far enough he will come out on the side of this rock."

Faria scratched his chin through his beard, he had been considering that since Dantès made contact. "A schematic miscalculation compounded by a rather large boulder," he finally said. "This a frustrating turn of events... I'll have to recalculate the direction of the tunnel..."

Faria scratched his chin through his beard, he had been considering that since Dantès made contact. "A schematic miscalculation compounded by a rather large boulder," he finally said. "This a frustrating turn of events... I'll have to recalculate the direction of the tunnel..."

“Perhaps,” Faria murmured. The young man had shown himself to be industrious and determined, but was he trust worthy? Would he betray a fellow when the going got tough? “It is difficult to say. I began about a year after I arrived and I’ve gotten as far as this. Your help would speed the process, but your tools…” he pointed to the now practically useless piece of pitcher than Dantès still gripped in his hand, “won’t last long. We would have to fashion more lasting tools. If you expect escape tonight or this or month or year you will be greatly disappointed.” But something shifted in Faria at Dantès’s crestfallen look. “I can show you how to fashion tools, I’ve diagramed the process.”

"Quietly, young man, quietly," the Abbé admonished. "You may be heard. But here, here is my chisel, made out of one of the clamps of my bedstead." He handed Dantès a sharp strong blade, with a handle made of beech wood. "It is responsible for the majority of the fifty feet I've tunneled. I've also pincers and a lever... but I lack a good file." His voice full of humility.

Fuelled by Dantes's enthusiasm and a since of comraderie he hadn't felt in years, Faria was compelled to share his inventions with the young man. "We will have to go to my cell," he explained even as he lowered himself into the hole through which he came. "You'll have to stoop as you walk, but it is quite sound."

Faria followed the familiar path to the faint light at the other end which marked his cell. "You see the tunnel goes in the opposite direction for a ways before it ends at a large mass of granite. It would take ten miners as many years to break though it."

"I've had plenty of time to do it in," Faria replied, then added with a sweeping gesture, "Years. " He scrambled up through the hole and into his own cell and lent Dantes his hand so that he might follow. "I wish I might offer a different view, but my cell is very much like your own, except...." here he knelt down beside his bed and felt around for his hidey hole, in a moment he was back on his feet with the tools he'd took such great pains to craft. "... a few additions I've made."

"Of course," Faria replied. "I have sketched out my inventions and what I know of this prison, I make details my progress so that I may refer back to them when I have run into a set-back. I have treated two of my shirts so that they are as smooth and easy to write on as paper and I make my ink from the soot in that old fireplace and the wine they give me every Sunday." He pointed to the long unused fireplace position on the walk opposite his bed. "But tell me what you know of the world before you were imprisoned here, for it was some years after I was."

Faria proceeded the new details, "Fascinating, very fascinating. So much change in so little time, and yet some much stays the same... but now your case greatly interests me, my friend. I occurs to me that you have been undone by your colleagues and men who had much to gain by your removal from society."

"It is a simple matter that you may come to learn, my friend," Faria replied, ceasing his pacing and propping himself up against the wall. "Your thoughts are clouded because your emotions are too strong, because you look at your world and the people in it and associate emotions to them, so you don't see how any one of those supposed friends might do you a turn." Dantes blinked in confusion.

"Look here, aren't the events of that day most peculiar? You said the only people who knew of that letter were your shipmate and your employer, and the latter because of the former, right?" Dantes nodded. "Did you show it or talk of it to anyone else?"

"No," the young man replied.

"So at least one of the fiends is your employer or your shipmate, I think you will agree your shipmate is the more likely suspect. What would each have to gain from your imprisonment?"

“See. You are clouding the matter with emotion again,” Faria interjected. “Perhaps it is difficult for you to see because you do not think in those terms, but look beyond how you would behave to how another might. Where is the benefit? I do not give up entirely on your employer, but let’s look at the shipmate more carefully. You stated that told your employer about the letter, which makes me wondered why... Tell me, who was next likely to make captain had not you been chosen?

“Their opinion of him matters little, dear boy,” Faria explained. “Such a position comes with power which demands respect and there is too the increase in monetary gain. Men have killed and been killed for as much. Now, who else might profit? Who else might conspire with such a man again you? Have you nothing else that men might covet?”

“Ah, yes! The wedding,” Faria exclaimed, recalling Edmond’s tale. “Tell me, were there others who vie for the attentions of said mademoiselle?”

“No, no, no, my boy! You misunderstand me,” Faria replied. “I am not questioning your lady’s honour, but that of others who might envy the attentions that she has bestowed upon you. Is there no other who look after your lady with the light of love in his eyes? No man who burns holes into the back of your skull for every moment that you spend with the young mademoiselle?”

"Ah, there is your second suspect, my boy," Faria grinned. "Men would do anything for the favours of a beautiful woman. You say your woman is true to you, which gives more weight to the idea that this Fernand may have been involved. How else was he to sever your bond without alienation the girl, other than to conspire to make you disappear?"

"Perhaps their were others, perhaps not," Faria replied. "As you think on it now the answer may become clearer, but there is whom we have not discussed. The man who arrested you... you say he believed your innocence?"

Seeing Dante’s eyes sharpen to the truth, Faria nodded solemnly. After this day, the boy would never look at the world the same way again. “A man would not sentence an innocent as you have been without cause. Either for gain or to protect himself. With your new perception, tell me, when did Villefort change? Was it before or after he read the letter entrusted to you?”

“One might think that... and be proven wrong,” Faria replied solemnly, peeling himself away from the wall and sitting on the edge of his bed. All the time his eyes never left Dantes’. “That you are here and not enjoying the company of your woman or guiding your ship proves there is more to this than simply denouncing a traitor. The method of your imprisonment suggests to me that there was something in the name you gave that struck close to this Villefort. Can you still recall the name?”