“Then why don’t you speak? I said where is your prisoner?”
“I—I don’t know, sir,” was the extremely feeble reply.
“Wha-a-a-t!” shouted the lieutenant. “I don’t know, sir,” cried Murray, desperately now. “He’s gone.”
“Gone? My good sir,” cried the lieutenant, “you were sent here in charge of him for some cryptic idea of the captain, and you tell me he’s gone? You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve let him escape!”
“I didn’t let him escape, sir,” faltered the lad, glancing at his brother middy and reading in his countenance, rightly or wrongly, that Roberts was triumphing over the trouble he was in—“I didn’t let him escape, sir,” cried Murray desperately, “for I was being as watchful as possible; but he was very ill and weak and said that he wanted to lie down in one of the rooms there. Tom May will tell you the same, sir.”
“I dare say he will, sir, when I ask him,” said the lieutenant sternly. “Now I am asking you the meaning of this lapse of duty.”
“I did keep watch over him, sir, and posted my men all round the cottage; but when I came to see how he was getting on—”
“Getting on, sir! Getting off, you mean.”
“No, sir; I did not see him go off, sir,” faltered Murray.
“Don’t you try to bandy words with me, sir,” cried the lieutenant, beginning to fulminate with rage. “There, speak out plainly. You mean to tell me that when you came to look for your prisoner—for that is what he is—he was gone?”