Later we dared not stay; it was past nine now. I bade Fred good-bye, and God-speed.
“Between half-past twelve and one, mind, will be your time; you’ll hear the clock strike,” was Tod’s parting injunction, given in a whisper. “Good luck to you, old fellow! I hope and trust you’ll dodge the enemy. And as soon as you are clear of the churchyard, make off as if the dickens were behind you.”
“Here’s the key, Mr. Bumford,” I said, while Tod stole off with his bundle the other way, Fred’s boots, and hair, and all that. “You won’t be bothered for it next week, for I shall be off to school again.”
“Thought you’d took up your lodging inside for the night,” grunted Bumford. “Strikes me, Master Ludlow, it’s more play nor work with you.”
“As it is with a good many of us, Bumford. Good-night!”
We walked home in the moonlight, silent enough, Tod handing me the bundles to carry. The Squire attacked us, demanding whether we had stayed out to look at the moon.
And I tossed and turned on my restless bed till the morning hours, thinking of poor Fred Westerbrook, and of whether he would get away. When sleep at last came, it brought me a very vivid dream of him. I thought he did not get away: he was unable to unlock the church-door. Whether Tod and I had double-locked it in leaving, I knew not; but Fred could not get it open. When Clerk Bumford entered the church in the morning, and the early comers of the congregation with him, there stood Fred, hopelessly waiting to be taken. I saw him as plainly in my dream as I had ever seen him in reality: with the dirty smock-frock, and the patched boots, and the clipped hair. Shepherd, who seemed to follow me in, darted forward and seized him; and in the confusion I awoke. Just for a minute I thought it was true—a scene actually enacted. Would it prove so?