“O, I did it at odd times when I thought there was the least danger of being caught; but, I tell you, I had a narrow escape once. I was working on this very door, and Tom, you were floor-guard at the time. You see there were a good many days when I couldn’t do anything at all on account of the guards, who I knew were not to be trusted. Well, I was working there in the dark and had just put the plug into the hole, when the bell rang. I had been obliged to do some whittling in order to make the plug fit to suit me, but I had been careful to put all the shavings on a piece of paper. If I had left them on the floor, and anybody had come in there with a lantern, he would have seen them, of course, and I should have had my work for nothing. When I heard the bell ring, I grabbed up that piece of paper and started for the stairs; but just then the back door opened, and who should come in but the officer of the day.”
Don’s auditors, who were listening with almost breathless interest, uttered ejaculations indicative of the greatest surprise and sympathy.
“I thought I was fairly cornered,” continued Don, “and at first I did not know what to do. I listened until I heard the officer go into the hall on the lower floor, and then I jerked off my boots and went up the next two flights of stairs, and up the ladder that leads to the scuttle; and there I sat on one of the topmost rounds until he tried all the doors and went down again.”
“Don, you’re a good one,” said Fisher, again. “But why didn’t you let us know what you were doing? Some of us might have helped you.”
“Well, you see, I expected to be caught, and I wanted to be able to say that I had received no assistance, and that nobody knew what I was up to. I couldn’t have told that story if I had taken you into my confidence; and I wouldn’t, either.”
We confess to a great liking for Don Gordon, and to a positive admiration of his moral as well as physical courage; but we are not blind to his failings. We have no patience with the way he acted at school after the solemn promises he had made his mother—they were all forgotten now—nor do we like the way he reasoned with himself. In his opinion there were different grades of lies. For example: If the superintendent had asked him if it were he who had been halted by Dick Henderson on a certain morning, he would have promptly replied that it was—the fear of punishment would not have made him deny it; and yet when he reached his room he told Bert a lie, although every word he uttered was the truth. By the answers he gave to Bert’s questions he led the latter to infer that the officer of the day was the only one who had come into that room, and we know that such was not the case. Don was not altogether consistent.
“Are all the doors that lead into the fire-escape fixed in this way?” asked Tom.
“No; only yours and mine. There was no need of bothering with the other two doors, for the boys in the first and second classes don’t run with our crowd.”
“That’s so,” said Duncan; “but I know that some of them go to Cony Ryan’s as regularly as we do.”
“They used to,” said Tom; “but I don’t think they have been there since these new fastenings were put on. What shall I do with this?” he added, as Don passed the wire over to him.