"Want me to help you out?"
"Of course. Don't be fooling now," pleaded Roger.
"Well," said Belcher, "I've thought it over, and seeing you're in there so nicely I've concluded I won't. I've an old score against you. Perhaps you'd like to pay it now."
With that he dropped the trap-door, and made off.
He had come after his basket of berries. Would he be heartless enough to go home now and leave his schoolmate in that damp hole, pestilent with mildew and haunted, perhaps, by sliding adders and loathsome creatures?
Meantime the parents of Roger, when the hour passed at which he was expected home, began to make inquiries for him. Frank Staples and Philip Granger, who both supposed he had climbed out of the vault and ran away with Belcher from the hut, were much surprised when asked where he was, and told that he had not returned.
Their story of the encounter with Dirk Avery and Ben Trench made the parents still more anxious.
Possibly their boy had come to some harm at the hands of those drunken ruffians. Would Philip mind going over to the pasture again and showing just where it all happened?
Philip gladly consented, and getting leave from home accompanied Mr. Blake to the lot where they had gathered their berries.