“Cut the rope, and get back as soon as you can. Don’t wait to listen whether I elude the men.”
“No, father.”
Sir Robert stood holding his son’s hand for a few moments, and listening to the murmur of voices at the back of his house, where the soldiers were talking rather excitedly.
“For liberty and life, Frank!” whispered Sir Robert then; and with the perspiration standing in great drops on the boy’s face, he saw his father grasp the rope knotted so tightly from the hole by the lead on which he stood over the stone coping, throw back his cloak, and then lay himself flat on the parapet, and carefully lower his feet as he held on by the stone. From that he lowered himself, and, partly supported by the top of the leaden stack-pipe, he slowly changed his right hand to the loop of the rope; then softly gliding by the wide-open head of the pipe, he began to descend with the rope well twined round his right leg, and held to the calf of his heavy boot by the edge of his left boot sole.
“If the rope should break or come undone!” thought the boy, as he turned cold and dropped upon his knees to reach over and grip the knot with both hands, while his lips moved as he muttered a prayer, feeling the thin cord quiver and jerk as if it were a strange nerve which connected him with his father, who was below there somewhere in the darkness—jar, thrill, and make a humming noise like the string of some huge bass instrument, but so faint that it would have been inaudible at any other time. But he could hear plainly enough, without any exaltation of his senses, that the soldiers were talking earnestly not a hundred yards away, their voices rising clearly to where the boy knelt.
How long was it that he could feel that vibration of the cord which thrilled through him right to his toes, and made his hair feel as if it were being lifted from his scalp? Ten minutes—five minutes—a quarter of an hour? Not many seconds, and then it stopped; and the horror of feeling it suddenly slacken and hearing a heavy crashing fall did not assail the anxious boy, though he had fully expected it. The vibration ceased, and there was a quick, warning shake, which Frank interpreted to mean a signal for him to remember his orders, and hasten back to the house.
He would have liked to lean over, listening and straining his sight to follow the further movements of his father; but Sir Robert had, unconsciously to both, gradually disciplined his son into a prompt, soldierly way of instantly obeying orders, and directly that wave had passed up to him, Frank’s knife was out, and the rope, after a good deal of sawing, was cut through, the knife replaced, and the cord was rapidly drawn up, and laid down on the leads in a loose coil.
He bent over then for a moment or two and listened, but all was still just below. There was no alarm such as he had dreaded, no shouting and firing of shots; and gathering up the rope, he hurried back along the narrow leads, using the same precaution of leaning inward, passed from house to house quickly, and kept on asking himself what he should do to hide the rope.
No idea came, and he had nearly reached home before it flashed across his brain, and he drew a breath of relief.
There was a hiding-place just before him, at the top of the low ridge of the house two doors away from his own. A low chimney was smoking steadily, and without pausing to think whether it was wise or no he crept up the slates, reached the ridge, grasped the side of the chimney stack, and stood upright, finding that he could just reach the top of the smoking pot.