Despite the fact that he was worried, Phil slept the normal sleep of a healthy boy, awaking in the morning both hungry and thirsty. He immediately secured the iron tipped stick that he had fashioned the night before, and took his place at the door, ready to strike down whoever entered, and make a dash for liberty. Nearly two hours elapsed, and the strain was beginning to tell upon him, when he heard a sound of shuffling footsteps outside the door. Grasping his club firmly in his hand, he prepared to act, but to his keen disappointment, however, the door was opened only an inch or two, and he heard LeBlanc's voice, bidding him out. Through the crack of the door, he could see LeBlanc's form, and immediately in back of him, that of the big restaurant keeper.
He made no response for a moment, and suddenly the door was thrown open, and LeBlanc and the proprietor came rushing in. LeBlanc seemed to be possessed of second sight, for he seemed to know that Phil had contemplated an attack on whoever came in the room, and he foiled this by rushing at Phil, jamming him close to the wall, and making it impossible for him to raise his club, much less than to use it.
"Aha, mon brave would fight would he? I thought so, and came prepared to care for you. We will see that he has nothing left to fight with."
Bidding his companion in French remove the cot, LeBlanc cast a hasty glance around the room to see if anything was left that by any artifice whatsoever could be converted into a weapon. Phil had carelessly thrown the blanket over the hole that he had made on the floor, and in a fold had tucked away the piece of candle.
LeBlanc paid no attention to the blanket, seeming to think that with the cot broken the boy had slept on the floor. The table and the empty bottle that had served as a candlestick were removed, and then food and water was brought to him and left there.
"Tonight I am ver' busy, but tomorrow you shall be taken from here in a trunk, and you shall be dropped in the river. How you will like that, hein?" and with an evil grin he left the room, leaving Phil again in the darkness to eat his food as best he could.
Phil rescued his candle, and lighted it to eat by, and then carefully extinguished it, for he knew it would not last a great while were it to burn steadily.
He had one wild idea left. It was dangerous in the extreme, it might mean death, but it was death if he stayed in the clutches of the renegade half-breed. This idea was to try to set fire to the door, in the hopes that it would burn enough without setting the whole room on fire until he could battle his way out.
This idea he meant to carry out only as a last resort. There were two chances left to him. One was that he could find some other method of escape, the other was that his chums would come to his rescue when he failed to return at the appointed hour of sundown.
At any rate, he would wait until the last minute before trying his desperate scheme. LeBlanc, he knew, would be gone the greater part of the night, for they did not plan to start until almost midnight for Lafe Green's house.