In Honour's Cause: A Tale of the Days of George the First

by George Manville Fenn

Fresh thoughts came fast now. It stood to reason that if Drew had been half wild with delirium he must have been roused; and he now recalled how coolly the doctor had taken the injury, and Captain Murray’s half-contemptuous manner, which he had thought unfeeling. Then, too, it was strange that Drew should have lain as he did, with his eyes tightly closed, just as if he were perfectly insensible, and never making the slightest sign when he had spoken to him.

For a few minutes Frank battled with the notion; but it grew stronger and stronger, and at last he was convinced.

“Then he was shamming,” he muttered indignantly, “pretending to be worse than he really was, so as to throw people off their guard, and then try again to escape.”

Once more he tried to prove himself to be in the wrong and thoroughly unjust to the wounded lad; but facts are stubborn things, and one after the other they rose up, trifles in themselves, but gaining strength as the array increased, and at last a bitter feeling of anger filled the boy’s breast, as he felt perfectly convinced of the truth that Drew had lain there waiting till he was asleep, and then, in spite of his wound, had crept out of the window, dropped, and gone.

But how could he? The sentries had stopped him before; why did they not do so at the second attempt?

And besides, there was the sentry just outside the door. Why had not he heard?

Frank went to the window again, and looked out, to find that it was not deemed necessary to place a guard over the guardroom and the officers’ quarters, save that there was one man at the main doorway, and this was beyond an angle from where he stood, while the next sentries were in the courtyard to his left, and the stable-yard, to his right. So that, covered by the darkness, it was comparatively an easy task to drop down unnoticed, though afterwards it was quite a different thing.

“Then he has gone!” said Frank softly; and he shrank away from the window, to stand thinking about how the lad could have managed to get away unseen by the sentries.

Thoughts came faster than ever; and he, as it were, put himself in his companion’s position, and unconsciously enacted almost exactly what had taken place. For Frank mentally went through what he would have done under the circumstances if he had been a prisoner who wished to get away.

He would have waited till all was still, and when the sentry at the door was pacing up and down, and his footsteps on the stone landing would help to dull any noise he made, he would slip out of the window, drop on to his toes, and then go down on all fours, and creep along close to the wall beneath the windows, right for the piazza-like place, and along beneath the arches, making not for either of the entrance gates, but for the private garden. There he would be stopped by the wall; but there was a corner there with a set of iron spikes pointing downward to keep people from climbing over, but which to an active lad offered good foot-and hand-hold, by means of which he felt that he could easily get to the top. From there he could drop down, go right across the garden to the outer wall, which divided it from the Park, and get on that somewhere by the help of one of the trees. Once on the top, he could choose his place, and crawl to it like a cat. Then all he had to do was to lower himself by his hands, and drop down, to be free to walk straight away, and take refuge with his friends.