In a few minutes he was again at the edge of the wood, near enough to see that the man wore a backpiece, and that the hilt of his sword was quite near his hand.
The hesitation was gone now. A glance showed that the attacking party were near the end of the lake, and that outposts of three or four men were dotted here and there, ready to drive back or capture any of the Cavaliers who might try to make their escape.
“I’ll do it,” said Fred to himself; and, stooping down, he crept nearer and nearer, holding back any twig or obtruding branch with his sword, and wincing and preparing for a spring, when a bramble grated against the edge of his blade.
But the man was too intent upon the scene below, and paid no heed to a warning which, had he been on the alert, would have placed Fred at a terrible disadvantage.
The lad’s eyes, as he crept on with sword in advance, were fixed on the back of the man’s half-hidden neck; and he had made his plans, but for all that he could not help glancing down at the advancing men, and pausing to note that the Cavaliers were at the barricaded windows, ready for their enemy.
And now for a moment Fred again wondered whether he was doing right, and whether his more sensible plan would not have been to go down to the camp and spread the alarm.
His answer to this thought was to set his teeth, which grated so loudly that his grip tightened on the hilt of his sword, and he felt sure that he must have been heard.
But no; the man lay perfectly still, watching intently, as motionless, in fact, as if he had been asleep; and Fred crept step by step nearer and nearer, till he felt that he was within springing distance, and then stopped to take breath.
“How easy it would be to kill him,” he thought, “and how cowardly;” and he was about to put his first idea into action, namely, to make one bold spring forward, and snatch the man’s sword from the sheath.
But the sword might stick, the sheath clinging to it tightly, as it would sometimes; and if it did, instead of the man being helpless, it would be he who was at the mercy of one who might beat him off with ease.