“Oh, I could get out as easily as possible, if I wanted to,” muttered Frank. “Poor Drew! what’s to become of him now?”
Frank stood thinking still, and saw it all more and more plainly. Drew would know where his father was, and go and join him. And then?
Frank shuddered, for he seemed to see ruin and misery, and the destruction of all prospects for his friend; and, in spite of the indignation he felt against him for his deceit, his heart softened, and he muttered, as he turned to go once more into the bed-chamber:
“Poor old Drew! I did like him so much, after all.”
As the boy entered the bedroom something caught his eye on the dressing table, and he looked at it wonderingly. It was the book he had been reading in the other room; the book, he knew, was there on the table when he lay down. Could he have taken it into the bed-chamber? No, he was sure he had not. Besides, there was a pen laid upon it, and it was open at the fly-leaf. Frank panted with excitement, for there, written in his friend’s hand, were the words:
“Good-bye, old Frank. We’ll shake hands some day, when I come back in triumph. I can’t forget you, though we did fall out so much. You’ll be wiser some day. I can’t write more; my wound hurts so much. I’m going to escape. If they shoot me, never mind; I shall have died like a man, crying, ‘God save King James!’
“Drew F.”
The tears rose to Frank’s eyes, and he did not feel ashamed of them, as he closed the book and thrust it into his pocket.
“Poor old Drew!” he said softly; “he believes he is doing right, and it is, after all, what his father taught him. My father taught me differently, so we can’t agree.”
What should he do? He must speak out, and it could make no difference now, for Drew must be safe away. He did not like to summon the sentry, and he shrank too, for he felt that he might be accused of aiding in the escape; but while he was thinking he heard steps crossing the open space in front, and glancing through the chamber window, he saw Captain Murray and the doctor coming toward the place.
The next minute their steps were on the stairs, the sentry challenged, the key rattled in the door, and the doctor entered first, to say jocularly as Frank advanced from the chamber: