She put her hand out of the window and I squeezed it a little.
Perhaps that was Chudleigh’s exclusive right.
But she did not complain, and Chudleigh knew nothing about it.
The British camp was surrounded, but on the side to which I was now coming the fire of the sharpshooters was more intermittent. It was the strongest part of the British lines, but I trusted that on such account the way for my escape would be more open there. At night, with so much confusion about, it would not be easy to guard every foot of ground. I walked very slowly until I came almost to the outskirts of the camp; then I stopped to consider.
In the part of the camp where I stood it was very dark. Some torches were burning in a half-hearted fashion forty or fifty feet away, but their own light only made the dusk around me the deeper. I was endeavoring to select the exact point at which I would seek to pass the lines, when some one touched me with light hand upon the shoulder.
I turned my head and saw Albert Van Auken, clad in the same cloak he wore the night he tried to counterfeit his sister. I was about to walk away, for I still felt much anger toward him, when he touched me again with light hand, and said in such a low voice that I could scarce hear:
“I am going to pay you back, at least in part, Dick. I will help you to escape. Come!”
Well, I was glad that he felt shame at last for the way in which he had acted. It had taken him a long time to learn that he owed me anything. But much of my wrath against him departed. It was too dark for me to see the expression of shame which I knew must be imprinted upon his face, but on his account I was not sorry that I could not see it.
He led the way, stepping very lightly, toward a row of baggage wagons which seemed to have been drawn up as a sort of fortification. It looked like a solid line, and I wondered if he would attempt to crawl under them, but when we came nearer I saw an open space of half a yard or so between two of them. Albert slipped through this crack without a word, and I followed. On the other side he stopped for a few moments in the shadow of the wagons, and I, of course, imitated him.