Evidently the plotters were dissatisfied with it, and Steve said disconsolately, “Well, such a rum old bomb-shell of a hole I never saw! I guess our plot will have to find other quarters, or else be given up.”
“Oh, we can come here and tinker it up,” Charles said hopefully.
“Yes, it’s bad enough; but it’s a good deal better than Charley seemed to think,” Will observed. “As Steve says, or means, it isn’t exactly the place that a French villain would choose for a prison, when the whole world is before him.”
“Did we decide how the Frenchman was to bring his prisoner from France to our sea-coast, and then on to this place?” George asked, beginning to have a just appreciation of the difficulties that lay before them.
“It will be safe to leave all that for my cousin to arrange,” Will said proudly. “He will make everything clear in the letter, I’m sure.”
“Of course he will,” Steve said promptly. “Now, I say, boys, there is one thing that puzzles me: this place is worth exploring and I should like nothing better than to ransack it again; but why have we never been here before?”
“Exactly;” chimed in the Sage, as another doubt arose in his mind. “Charley, if this place is really so worthless, and if it is free to all, why haven’t we been in the habit of coming here often, to fool away our time?”
Charley reflected a moment, and then said, boldly, “Well, if we look at it as a play-house, it’s too far gone for that; and if we look at it as a heap of romantic and interesting ruins, it isn’t gone far enough,—not destroyed or broken down enough, for that;—so why should we want to come here, except on account of our plot? There’s nothing else to draw us; and ten to one we should never have thought of coming here at all, if it hadn’t been for the plot. And as for being a place worth keeping up, I don’t know about that; but the man it belongs to doesn’t seem to think it is. Why, boys, we can have it all to ourselves; it will be just the place for our prison.”
“Well,” said Steve, “by the time we get it cleaned, and scoured, and, tinkered, and made respectable and ship-shape, we shall all be good housekeepers, and housemaids, and masons, and carpenters, and tinkers, and—and—. Boys,” suddenly, “we needn’t stand here staring in at this window, when we haven’t been through the garden yet.”