“Hold on. He hasn’t got a chair. I’ll get one.”
Mr. Faulkner was gone not more than two minutes and came back with a chair, which was pushed into the room, and then the jailer locked the door and put the key into his pocket. Cale took a look around his prison, and then walked to the window and took a good look there, too. It wasn’t a great ways to the ground, and Cale was certain, if his enemies did not put a sentry there to see that he did not drop down and take himself safe off, his escape would be an assured thing. He tried the window, and was gratified to find that it yielded to his touch. Then he walked back to the chair and seated himself upon it.
“Those Union men is mighty smart,” he soliloquized. “Because I am three stories up they think I am safe. I’ll show them how easy it will be for me to hang by my hands and drop down. And they talk about hanging me! I’ll bet they can’t do it.”
The muffled tread of the sentry came to his ears, and finally, when the clock struck, Eph opened the door to see if he was there.
CHAPTER XIV.
LEON A PRISONER.
“Ah!” said Eph, “you’re there yet. You are thinking over how you can escape being hung for your treason. Well, that’s a good way to put in one’s time.”
Cale did not answer. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed upon his hands, and he was thinking deeply—not of how he could escape being hanged, but of where he should go and what he should do in case he made the attempt at escape successful. He had heard Mr. Sprague, when he placed sentinels over his house, one in front and another behind—had heard him tell them not to let his father or mother go out of the house—and he knew it would be foolhardy to go home after that. The sentries would capture him and bring him back to his prison. Eph took an unbounded delight in bothering the boy. He knew that the most that would be done with Cale would be to ship him off among his friends, and that would be the last of him. He glanced at the window to see that it was all right, and then went out, closing the door behind him.
“That fellow keeps telling me that I am going to be hung,” said Cale, raising his head and glancing at the door through which Eph had just gone out. “What would I give to be in here at night when he comes in and finds the window open and Cale Newman gone? I tell you that would be worth some money. Now, if I could only find Dan. He would know where to go and what to do.”
For long hours Cale sat there and listened to the tread of the sentinel, and every time the clock struck down-stairs he lifted his head and looked at the sentinel, who opened the door and looked in. They were changed every two hours, and finally it began to grow dark. By that time Cale began to grow hungry, and while he was thinking about it the door opened and in came Mr. Faulkner, whose hands were filled with bedclothes and eatables.
“I can’t bear to have any man around me who I know is hungry, even if he is going to be hung,” said he. “Let me put this bread and meat on the chair. There’s something for you to lie down on. It’s pretty rough, I know, but I expect you get rougher at home. Good-night and pleasant dreams.”