“Sam, sah,” corrected the coachman. “That’s my name. The distance of the journey is immaterial—about fo’ miles. The horses are speedy, and will take you out there while you are talking about it. This way, sah; right this way. Hyar’s the carriage.”
The negro led the way through the depot to the sidewalk, where he had left his vehicle, an elegant barouche, in charge of a footman as black as himself. The boys got in without hesitation, the coachman and his companion mounted to their places on the box, and the swift horses whirled them away toward the country. The moment they were out of sight, four boys came out of the baggage-room in which they had been concealed, and one of them stepping up to the window of the telegraph office, wrote a dispatch addressed to Julius Clark, Bridgeport Military Academy. It ran as follows:
“Everything is just as it should be. There is no hitch anywhere. The hall looks beautiful, and the dinner is lovely. I hope the fellows will be satisfied with what we have done.”
Another boy, whose name was Baker, then came forward and affixed his initials, G. E. B., to the dispatch, and the operator sent it off.
“There, sir,” observed Endicott, as he and his three friends turned away from the window, “that telegram contains nothing but the truth. The hall really is magnificent—you know that was what we said when we saw it last night—and so is the dinner. Everything is just as it should be, for us, there has been nothing to interfere with our programme so far, and I certainly hope the fellows—our fellows—will be satisfied with what we have done. If, when Clark receives the dispatch, he chooses to think that the letters G. E. B. stand for George E. Blake instead of Gilbert E. Baker, he is welcome to do it. It won’t be our fault, will it?”
Meanwhile Blake and his unsuspecting committee were being carried farther and farther into the country. When they began to think it was about time that the “fo’ miles” were accomplished, the coachman informed them, in response to their inquiries, that they were only about half way to Mr. Taylor’s house—that miles in the country were about twice as long as they were in the city, and with that explanation they were obliged to be content. At length the carriage was driven into a piece of thick woods, through which the road wound and twisted in the most bewildering fashion. The coachman told them that he was taking a short-cut by which he would save half an hour’s driving over the very worst road in America; but on this point the boys were inclined to be skeptical.
“I should say that this was the very worst road in the known world,” exclaimed Forester, as he and Blake clung to opposite sides of the seat to keep from being dashed against each other. “If Mr. Taylor doesn’t give you a good overhauling for straining the springs of his carriage, I shall always think he ought to. Perhaps you had better let us get out and walk.”
“Oh no, sah,” protested the negro. “Mr. Taylor wouldn’t like for me to drap you young gentlemen in the mud. We are most da’ now, but I tell you befo’ han’ that I can’t take you close to the residence by this road. I’ll have to drap you at the foot of the hill, and let you walk across the pastur’.”
The boys said they wouldn’t mind that, but still they were somewhat surprised when the carriage came to a stand in the deepest and darkest part of the woods, and the coachman sprang down to open the door. On their right was a thick brush fence, inclosing a piece of barren and rocky pasture; and the coachman told them that when they reached the top of the hill they would see Mr. Taylor’s house in the valley below them. It wasn’t more than five minutes’ walk, he said, and he would wait there until they came back.
It was the greatest wonder in the world that Blake and his companions did not begin to suspect something by this time, but they didn’t. Their minds were so fully occupied with Mr. Taylor’s illness, and with thoughts of their dinner, which they knew would not pass off half as smoothly without him as it would with him, that they could not think of anything else. They thought it rather strange that Mr. Taylor’s man should dump them in the woods when he had been ordered to bring them to the house, and they told one another so as they toiled up the steep hill in the pasture; but still they did not dream of treachery until they reached the top and found that there was no house in sight. All they could see before them was a deep and thickly-wooded ravine, with another hill on the other side of it, as high and barren as the one on which they stood.