"But he scared you, Miss."
"Oh, not much. Only for a second. Then I guessed what his trouble was. Please say you won't scold him!" she pleaded.
"Well, I guess I'll have to, if you ask me that way, Miss," said the soldier with the air and manner of a Southern colonel. "We can't refuse the ladies anything, you know," and he bowed and smiled in a frank manner that pleased Alice.
"Then you won't punish him?" she asked.
"Punish him? Oh, no, Miss. Old Jake is just like a child. He sort of lives in the fort. No, I won't do any more than tell him to keep away from here, for them's the captain's orders, Miss."
"All right," she answered. "And now I think I had better join my friends. What a horrible place this is!" she added, with a backward look at the dungeon.
"You may well say that, Miss. But it isn't so bad now as it must have been in the old days. It's a queer world, that men would make such a place to put a fellow creature in," and with this somewhat philosophical remark the soldier saluted again, as Alice bade him good-bye.
"Why, where have you been?" Ruth asked, as sister appeared. "We have been looking all over for you. Where were you?"
"In jail!"
"Jail! Alice, don't joke about such things."