“No; I want to go now, with you all;” Henry said, firmly. “Suppose that I should take a pailful of supper with me, and not go till the afternoon—what if Marmaduke shouldn’t come, after all! Something might happen, you know, that he could not or would not come; and then,” putting on a comical smile, “I should have to stay in that dreadful haunted house for who knows how long?”
“Yes, it is better for Henry to get familiar with the old ruin while we are with him—I mean, it is better for us to go with him,” Will said. “Then to-night, about half an hour before Marmaduke and the rest of us start, he and Stephen will leave in advance of us, with a bundle of disguises and lanterns; so that when we, the rescuers, arrive, the place will be lighted and the captive clothed properly.”
“And the priest shaved,” Steve chimed in.
“Exactly,” Henry commented. “And, Steve, I can meanwhile drill you to act the part of a priest, shaved or not shaved. Don’t fret about the extra travelling, boys,” he added; “for if my boots dilapidate while I’m here, I’ll add them to the pile of rubbish in ‘Nobody’s House,’ and patronize one of your shoemakers.”
In due time the plotters arrived before the house. It was no longer the grim wreck described to the reader at the time the boys first visited it. No; thanks to their industry and ingenuity it was in much better repair; and, yes, it looked very much like—like a prison?—no! very much like a gigantic hen-coup.
“Why,” Henry cried in pleased surprise, “I wasn’t so far out of the way after all when I ventured to write about its being fortified equal to a fortress! But say, boys, where did you get the iron bars for the windows?”
“Irons!” Charles echoed, in ecstasy. “If you take ’em for iron bars, Marmaduke certainly will! No, Henry; no iron there; nothing but painted laths nailed on. We had two good reasons for putting on those laths; first, because in nailing up a crack every pane of glass left shivered itself all to flinders, and therefore the empty window-frames had to be hidden; and next, we put them there to make the place look like a grated prison.”
“And they do;” declared Henry, stripping off his “disguise” and heaving a sigh of relief.
“Yes, and they made me nail on all their laths,” said Stephen, “because I was foolish enough to say I could straddle a window-sill and whittle out a steamboat, or do anything else. You see that top window to the right?—Well, I was sitting there, struggling to drive an obstinate nail, when suddenly I pitched head over heels down to the ground!”