“Listen,” he said. “I have known Mr. Paul all my life. Father and mother have charge of the Ralston House, summers and winters. I was a boy with Mr. Paul, who has always treated me more like a brother than a servant. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Give my life, if necessary,—although it is hard to die when one is young.”
Here he stopped, and, dropping his head, seemed to be considering. Then he went on: “They’ll be through to-morrow and sentence him, unless we do something. I’ve thought it all out. The jail is a ricketty old rattletrap; the jailer sleeps far away from Mr. Paul’s room and is deaf; the window casings are rotten as dirt; the bars loose. I know, I’ve tried ’em. I haven’t been there night after night for nothing. It’s easy for him to get out and be free.”
“Oh, if he only could,” Elithe said, and Tom continued: “I can do it, but must have help. I can trust no one but you. Will you go with me to-night? You know the Ralston boat-house. Meet me there at twelve o’clock sharp. We’ll row up the coast, opposite the jail. I know a place where we can land. I’ve been there two or three times. We can fasten the boat till we get him out. What do you say?”
Elithe had scarcely breathed as Tom talked, but now she said, “What will you do with him? He can’t go on the street.”
“Leave that to me,” Tom replied. “You’ve heard of that queer room in the basement of the Ralston House, once used by smugglers, they say. Few know the entrance to it. We’ll keep him there till the search blows over. It won’t last long, or be very thorough. Then, we’ll get him off the island some way if I have to row him across to the Basin. I can do that, and he can go to Europe or Canada or somewhere. There’s not a man, woman or child that will not be glad to hear he has escaped.”
Elithe was young and ignorant and excited, and did not consider the risk in trying to escape from the island, or the obstacles to be surmounted after it and the sure penalty if he were captured. She only thought of Paul free, and that by helping to free him she would atone for her testimony against him. Just why Tom needed her she did not ask, and he scarcely knew himself, except that he wanted companionship and knew he could trust her. After thinking a moment, she said, “I’ll go with you, but I’d like to tell auntie.”
“Not for the world!” was Tom’s energetic response. “Nobody must know it but you and me. After he is safe in the basement, I shall tell his father and mother.”
Elithe was persuaded, and, with a promise not to fail, she left Tom and returned to the cottage, where supper was waiting for her. But neither she nor her aunt could eat much. Their thoughts were with the incidents of the day they had passed, and which seemed to have added years to Miss Hansford’s age and Elithe’s feelings. They didn’t talk of it. They could not, and at an early hour they said good-night to each other and went to their respective sleeping rooms. Once alone, Elithe began to waver and wish she had not promised Tom to join him. Then came thoughts of Paul and the joy it would be to see him free; aye, more, to help set him free, and she hesitated no longer. She heard the clock strike ten; then, overcome with fatigue, fell asleep in her chair, but awoke again as the clock was striking eleven. In an hour she was due at the boat-house, and, with her hat on, she sat down to wait and calculate how much time she ought to allow to reach it. It was dark, and once or twice she heard the sound of thunder in the distance and, as she leaned from the window to listen, she felt a coolness, like coming rain, upon her face. It must be time now, she thought, to start, and, with a noiseless step, she went down the back stairs and through the kitchen door. Once outside, she breathed more freely and felt her way cautiously along the piazza to the front steps, uttering a smothered cry as a hand grasped her arm.
“Hush!” came warningly from Tom, who had come to meet her.
“It’s awfully dark; there’s a storm brewing, and I thought you might be afraid,” he said, keeping hold of her and hurrying her along to the boat house.