"Those brutes have bagged him," groaned Hugh. "If—if only we had revolvers."
"I'm awfully sorry," said Clive lamely, for Hugh looked as if he would burst into tears.
"Awfully near blubbing," Clive told himself. And then, as if he felt that the responsibility of the situation had fallen on his own shoulders, he clutched Hugh by the arm and thrust him towards the window.
"Let's go," he said. "No use giving him longer grace. Let's get off to the police. We can then show them the way back and help in the capture."
Sadly and desperately did the two clamber down the ivy to the ground beneath. They sneaked away from the tower as if they were afraid that shots might follow them. Then they plunged into the copse in which their bicycles lay, and having found the latter, mounted their own and sprinted off to the village as fast as the wheels and their feet would allow. Two breathless lads at length threw themselves from their machines at the gate of the cottage which did duty as a police depot.
"What's amiss?" asked the police sergeant, coming to the door in his shirt sleeves to answer their loud and peremptory summons. "What! Mister Clive and Mister Hugh! You ain't been diggin' more pits fer Mr. Rawlings, have you?"
There was a stupid grin on his face. His insolence made the boys' blood boil. Were they never to hear the last of that business?
"I'm fairly sick of hearing of it," Hugh had grumbled on the previous day, for as is the case in the country, the tale had flown swiftly. Sly glances of amusement were cast after the retreating figure of Mr. Rawlings. That pompous individual now was far less patronising than on former occasions. He even nodded, instead of treating those who greeted him politely, as is the pleasant fashion in the country, to a lordly lifting of his stick. Mrs. Darrell's gardener chuckled perhaps half a dozen times a day when he thought of the occurrence.
"Of all the imps, them's they," he had often asserted down at the public which he frequented. "And mind you, I ain't so sure as some of their elders and their betters too, as you'd think, ain't mightily pleased at what happened. Bless you! The parson, he sent his boys away to school at once. Mister Hugh, he tells me that he and Mr. Bert come in fer a lickin'. But that don't prevent parson from bein' amused, do it? That don't prevent him thinking that it sarved Mr. Rawlings right. It's just this. You think of a man as you find him, and parson don't think much of him up at the Hall, if I'm a good un at guessing."
Whether the old fellow was a good un or not, the fact remained that the story was known far and wide, and the boyish escapade of our heroes condoned, if not actually approved of. Still, it was galling, to say the least, to call upon a police sergeant and to have the fellow casting the same old tale at them.