"Very good. Keep in the open as much as you can after you get away from here, and don't run too fast."
"All right. Are you ready?" and the boy stood on the chest beside Jack, looking up into the latter's face with such an air of determination that he laughed and said:
"Yes, I'm ready, up with you!" and Jack lifted the little fellow to the window level, and put him through, Percival saying in a low tone:
"It's all right. I don't hear a sound. I imagine they are all away somewhere, for I can neither see nor hear anything."
"Out you go!" said Jack, dropping the boy to the ground, and looking out to see that he was all right. "Now then, cut!"
He watched the boy till he disappeared in the woods, and then as he neither saw any one nor heard anything of an alarming nature, he said in a tone of great relief:
"He is all right, and I believe he will get there without trouble. I had an idea he would, or I would not have let him go."
"There he is, only half a boy, you might say," said Percival, "but ready to undertake anything for us, no matter how dangerous and there are those big overgrown bullies, Herring and Merritt, who would go all to bits if they had the half of this to do. I tell you, Jesse W. Smith is worth both of them in a lump, and with considerable on his side of the ledger after that, Jack."
"Yes, so he is," agreed Jack.
"And now we will simply have to wait, I suppose?"