"Come away," a voice said, and somebody drew him, unresisting, to the further side of the yard. Roy vaguely knew that it was an elderly English officer, one of the quietest and most retiring of the upstairs prisoners, seldom heard to speak. He made Roy sit down, and as the boy hid his face, a compassionate hand was on his wrist.
"I know, You were in the dungeon with them, I believe. Don't look any more. No good. It's over for them."
A sound asked the question which Roy could not put into words.
"It was last night. They tried to escape over the wall. It seems to have been planned for some time. But they were overheard and betrayed by a fellow-prisoner. The scoundrel! They got away safely to the top of the wall, and let down the rope. Their plan had been to descend one by one, I believe; but they found that too slow, and time was short. So when they had fastened the rope, they got upon it all together. A French officer was on the watch, and he seized the moment to cut it above. The miscreant! The hound! He'll get his deserts some day! They all fell. Several were killed instantly,—as we see. Some, with broken limbs, are in hospital. This is not the first time that an escape has ended thus. The bodies are always exposed next day."
Roy shuddered.
"You may be thankful that you were not among them."
Another shudder.
The grey-haired Colonel bent gravely towards him.
"If any friend of yours is there, do not grieve too much, my boy. Some of us might well be disposed to envy them. They are in God's Hands now, and that is well. God is kinder far than man."
He might indeed say so, looking across the yard. Roy lifted his face, as if in bitter protest. Was man kind, if man could do such deeds as these? And then he thought of Ivor, of his father, of Sir John Moore.