At last he gave a faint exclamation of satisfaction, and stole back to his own room. Waggie, who was now lying on the bed, moved uneasily. George lighted a candle and examined the plastered wall which ran between his room and the one where the unconscious Watson and Macgreggor were gently snoring. He knew that the bed on which they slept was directly on the other side of this wall, and he judged that the partition itself was very thin. In this theory he was correct: the laths and their plaster covering formed a mere shell, which was not much thicker than an ordinary wooden partition. Taking a large jack knife from his waistcoat he began to cut into the wall, about four feet from the floor. Before long he had made a small hole, not bigger than the dimensions of a five-dollar gold piece, straight through the plaster. Looking through it, with the aid of his candle, he saw that Watson and Macgreggor were stretched out in bed on the other side, each half-dressed and each sleeping as if there were no such thing in the world as war or danger.
“They deserve a good sleep,” said the boy to himself; “but it can’t be helped, so here goes!” At the same moment he extinguished his candle, pulled it out of the candlestick, and poked it through the hole. He directed it in such a way that it fell squarely on the face of Macgreggor. The man suddenly stopped snoring, turned his body from one side to the other, and then started up in the bed, in a half-sitting posture.
“Macgreggor! Mac!” whispered George; “it’s I, George Knight. Don’t speak loud.”
“Where on earth are you?” asked the newly-awakened sleeper, in a startled voice.
“Never mind where I am,” answered George. “Only don’t make a noise. But get up, light your candle, and open your door for me without letting them hear you down-stairs.”
By this time Watson was awake too, and had jumped to the floor. When Macgreggor lighted his candle, and saw the little hole in the wall, at which appeared one of George’s eyes, he almost gave a cry of surprise; but prudence restrained him, and he merely touched Watson’s arm, pointed to the hole, and then quietly unlocked the door of their room. George soon crept carefully in, and proceeded, in as low a voice as he could command, to tell the two men what he had heard from the kitchen.
“The Vigilants!” whispered Watson. “Why, don’t you know what that means? When we were in Jasper to-day I saw some of them standing around the village grocery store, and even talked with them. They thought I was a good ‘Confed,’ and I found out that they are organized into a band to arrest suspicious characters, keep things in order in this section of the county and even turn guerrillas when they are wanted.”
“I see the whole thing,” said Macgreggor. “This Hare has sent his negro over to Jasper to bring the Vigilants here to take charge of us, and to string us up, no doubt, to the first convenient tree. The sooner we get away from here the better for our lives. Jasper is only two miles off, and the Vigilants will be riding over here before we have time to say Jack Robinson.”
“There’s still time,” said George, “and as there’s only one man here against us now—I mean Hare—we can seize him, tie him to something, and then escape into the darkness.”
“So we can, my boy,” replied Watson, who was thinking as deeply and as calmly as if a game of chess, rather than a matter of life and death, were the issue. “There’s no trouble as to our escaping. But remember this. It’s pitch dark and raining again like cats and dogs; we don’t know our way; we are sure to get lost before we have run fifty yards from the house, and these Vigilants, who understand every foot of the country, will divide into small parties, and hunt us down, as sure as fate. And if they can’t, they will put hounds on our track—and then we’ll be beautifully carved up into beefsteaks. I have seen hounds, and I know how they appreciate a nice little man hunt.” Watson smiled grimly.