Improve the bracketed part of the sentence: The thief escaped (from burning) as the noble King pardoned him.

Introduction / Context:
This sentence improvement question checks your understanding of correct idiomatic expressions in English, especially the structure used after verbs like escape. The original sentence talks about a thief who avoids a punishment, and you must choose the most natural and grammatically correct way to express what he escaped from, once the noble King granted him a pardon.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• Original sentence: The thief escaped (from burning) as the noble King pardoned him.
• Options: of being burnt, from being burnt, from having being burnt, no improvement.
• The context suggests the thief was going to be burnt as punishment but avoided that fate because of the King's mercy.
• We need a phrase that fits escape + preposition + gerund structure naturally.

Concept / Approach:
In English, the usual pattern is escape from something, not escape of something. When we talk about avoiding a particular action or experience, we often use escape from being + past participle. Thus, escape from being burnt is the idiomatic way to describe avoiding the punishment of being burnt. We must also avoid unnecessary tense complications like from having being burnt, which is ungrammatical.

Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Identify the core verb pattern: escape from something bad. Step 2: Recognise that the punishment is to be burnt, so we need a passive gerund: being burnt. Step 3: Combine the correct preposition with the gerund phrase to form from being burnt. Step 4: Check option of being burnt. The combination escaped of being burnt is not standard English usage. Step 5: Check option from having being burnt. This contains the incorrect sequence having being; the correct perfect gerund would be having been, not having being, so the phrase is wrong. Step 6: Evaluate no improvement. The original from burning is less precise and sounds as if he escaped while something was burning rather than escaped the punishment of being burnt. Step 7: Conclude that from being burnt is the best and most idiomatic choice.

Verification / Alternative check:
You can compare similar sentences: He escaped from being jailed, She escaped from being fined, They escaped from being expelled. In each case, escape from being + past participle clearly expresses avoiding a negative consequence. Replacing it with escape of being or escape from having being makes the sentence sound unnatural or wrong. When we apply the same pattern to the question sentence, The thief escaped from being burnt as the noble King pardoned him reads smoothly and accurately.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Of being burnt is wrong because escape of is not the standard collocation in English. From having being burnt is doubly wrong: the auxiliary sequence having being is incorrect; it should be having been, and even then the extra perfect aspect is unnecessary here. No improvement is wrong because from burning does not clearly convey that he avoided a specific punishment; it could be misread as escaping from a fire, not from execution.

Common Pitfalls:
Students often overlook small function words like prepositions and auxiliary verbs, focusing only on content words. However, in sentence improvement questions, these small elements are exactly where the error lies. Another pitfall is thinking that an original phrase that sounds vaguely understandable must be acceptable. Competitive exams demand not just understandable English but idiomatic, polished usage.

Final Answer:
The correct improvement is from being burnt, giving The thief escaped from being burnt as the noble King pardoned him.