"What, you mean you could smoke with all this trouble hanging over us?" exclaimed Jack.
"Why not? It would help me to think. When I'm figgering out anything I always like to have a smoke."
"Then you have a plan?"
"I didn't say so."
"Oh, Pete, tell me what it is. Do you think we can escape?"
"Now, Jack, don't bother a contemplative man," said Pete provokingly. "I ain't going ter deny that I was indulging in speculation, but what I've been thinking out is such a flimsy chance that I'm downright ashamed to talk about it."
Jack, therefore, had to be content with sitting still on the floor of the cell, while Pete knitted his brows and thought and thought and thought.
So the afternoon wore away somehow, and it grew dark.
In the meantime, Jack, from Pete's shoulder, had taken another survey through the window, if such the hole in the solid wall could be called. A desperate hope had come to him that in the darkness they could squeeze through it, and in some way reach the ground. But it was an aspiration that a short survey of the situation was destined to shatter.