“So they have caught you again?” remarked an under-officer, as he strode up with a sinister smile on his swarthy countenance. “You did not get very far.”
“No, I had a bad fall and lamed my foot,” replied Larry, as cheerfully as he could. He was never one to “cry over spilt milk.”
“A fall? Where?”
“I fell over the high cliff just below here.”
“And you live to tell it? Impossible!”
“No, it is true. I fell into a large tree, and that broke my fall. But I was badly scratched up, and my ankle was sprained.”
“A rare fall truly, boy. It would have been better, though, if you had been killed.”
“Thank you; I like that!”
“I say it because you are a prisoner who has tried to escape from us. Do you know the fate of all such?”