The window in the next room--it was open!
He darted back and ran to the window to thrust out his head and look
down. Yes, it was easy enough; he could himself have got out, hung by
his hands, and dropped upon the pavement, which would not have been
above eight feet from the soles of his boots as he hung.
But the wound! How could a lad who was badly wounded in the arm manage
to perform such a feat?
He must have been half wild, delirious from fever, to have done such a
thing. No.
Fresh thoughts came fast now. It stood to reason that if Drew had been
half wild with delirium he must have been roused; and he now recalled
how coolly the doctor had taken the injury, and Captain Murray's
half-contemptuous manner, which he had thought unfeeling. Then, too, it
was strange that Drew should have lain as he did, with his eyes tightly
closed, just as if he were perfectly insensible, and never making the
slightest sign when he had spoken to him.
For a few minutes Frank battled with the notion; but it grew stronger
and stronger, and at last he was convinced.
"Then he was shamming," he muttered indignantly, "pretending to be worse
than he really was, so as to throw people off their guard, and then try
again to escape."
Once more he tried to prove himself to be in the wrong and thoroughly
unjust to the wounded lad; but facts are stubborn things, and one after
the other they rose up, trifles in themselves, but gaining strength as
the array increased, and at last a bitter feeling of anger filled the
boy's breast, as he felt perfectly convinced of the truth that Drew had
lain there waiting till he was asleep, and then, in spite of his wound,
had crept out of the window, dropped, and gone.
But how could he? The sentries had stopped him before; why did they not
do so at the second attempt?
And besides, there was the sentry just outside the door. Why had not he
heard?
Frank went to the window again, and looked out, to find that it was not
deemed necessary to place a guard over the guardroom and the officers'
quarters, save that there was one man at the main doorway, and this was
beyond an angle from where he stood, while the next sentries were in the
courtyard to his left, and the stable-yard, to his right. So that,
covered by the darkness, it was comparatively an easy task to drop down
unnoticed, though afterwards it was quite a different thing.
"Then he has gone!" said Frank softly; and he shrank away from the
window, to stand thinking about how the lad could have managed to get
away unseen by the sentries.
Thoughts came faster than ever; and he, as it were, put himself in his
companion's position, and unconsciously enacted almost exactly what had
taken place. For Frank mentally went through what he would have done
under the circumstances if he had been a prisoner who wished to get
away.
He would have waited till all was still, and when the sentry at the door
was pacing up and down, and his footsteps on the stone landing would
help to dull any noise he made, he would slip out of the window, drop on
to his toes, and then go down on all fours, and creep along close to the
wall beneath the windows, right for the piazza-like place, and along
beneath the arches, making not for either of the entrance gates, but for
the private garden. There he would be stopped by the wall; but there
was a corner there with a set of iron spikes pointing downward to keep
people from climbing over, but which to an active lad offered good
foot-and hand-hold, by means of which he felt that he could easily get
to the top. From there he could drop down, go right across the garden
to the outer wall, which divided it from the Park, and get on that
somewhere by the help of one of the trees. Once on the top, he could
choose his place, and crawl to it like a cat. Then all he had to do was
to lower himself by his hands, and drop down, to be free to walk
straight away, and take refuge with his friends.
"Oh, I could get out as easily as possible, if I wanted to," muttered
Frank. "Poor Drew! what's to become of him now?"
Frank stood thinking still, and saw it all more and more plainly. Drew
would know where his father was, and go and join him. And then?
Frank shuddered, for he seemed to see ruin and misery, and the
destruction of all prospects for his friend; and, in spite of the
indignation he felt against him for his deceit, his heart softened, and
he muttered, as he turned to go once more into the bed-chamber:
"Poor old Drew! I did like him so much, after all."
As the boy entered the bedroom something caught his eye on the dressing
table, and he looked at it wonderingly. It was the book he had been
reading in the other room; the book, he knew, was there on the table
when he lay down. Could he have taken it into the bed-chamber? No, he
was sure he had not. Besides, there was a pen laid upon it, and it was
open at the fly-leaf. Frank panted with excitement, for there, written
in his friend's hand, were the words:
"_Good-bye, old Frank. We'll shake hands some day, when I come back
in triumph. I can't forget you, though we did fall out so much.
You'll be wiser some day. I can't write more; my wound hurts so much.
I'm going to escape. If they shoot me, never mind; I shall have died
like a man, crying, `God save King James_!'
"_Drew F_."
The tears rose to Frank's eyes, and he did not feel ashamed of them, as
he closed the book and thrust it into his pocket.
"Poor old Drew!" he said softly; "he believes he is doing right, and it
is, after all, what his father taught him. My father taught me
differently, so we can't agree."
What should he do? He must speak out, and it could make no difference
now, for Drew must be safe away. He did not like to summon the sentry,
and he shrank too, for he felt that he might be accused of aiding in the
escape; but while he was thinking he heard steps crossing the open space
in front, and glancing through the chamber window, he saw Captain Murray
and the doctor coming toward the place.
The next minute their steps were on the stairs, the sentry challenged,
the key rattled in the door, and the doctor entered first, to say
jocularly as Frank advanced from the chamber:
"Morning, Gowan. Wounded man's not dead, I hope."