"You see, this room has no windows, and I keep very quiet, and so, perhaps, I could remain here safely a month. But I won't. I have plans for escape back to the French lines."
At this moment the door opened again. The old peasant came in with a tray on which was a dish of smoking meat, dark bread and potatoes and a pot of coffee.
"Now, since you are old friends I shall leave you," said the old man smiling, as he patted both young Americans on the shoulder. "But Monsieur Reade knows how to call me if I am wanted. Good rest and stout hearts, young gentlemen!"
"We'll feast a bit!" cried Prescott eagerly.
"You will," Tom corrected. "I've had my evening meal and am not hungry. Eat before the candle burns out, and while you do so I will fix the ventilator for the night. When you have eaten we can turn in on the bed, for we can talk there as well as when sitting in the dark." Dick fell to ravenously on the food and coffee, while Tom attended to ventilation by removing a loose brick from a chimney, half of which was in this blind attic.
"We must pay this peasant well," Dick proposed, when he had nearly finished the meal, "for I'll wager he is not rich."
"I can pay him all right," declared Reade, striking a hand against his waist-line. "In my money belt I have a stock of American gold. Gold is a money that is very popular in Europe in these days of hardship."
Later the chums disrobed and turned in. There was abundance of covering to the bed.
"Now," proposed Tom Reade, talking in whispers, "for my plan of escape. It's dangerous, and it sounds impossible, fantastic. But now that you're here, Dick Prescott, I feel equal to putting anything through! So here's for the plan!"
It was dangerous enough, certainly, as Tom Reade outlined it. It didn't even strike Captain Prescott as being possible of performance, but he didn't say so. It was the only plan of escape that presented itself, and Tom had evidently put in all his hopes on that idea.