"They're a coming, Master Ferdy," exclaimed the poor boy, growing still whiter.
"Never mind," said Ferdy, trying hard to be brave, "Thomas is all right, he won't let them come up here."
"Oh, but maybe he can't stop them," said Jesse. "The p'lice can force their way anywheres. I wouldn't mind so much if it had to be—like if your papa was here and said I must go to prison. But if they take me off now with no one to speak up for me, seems to me as if I'd never get out again."
Poor Ferdy was even more ignorant than Jesse of everything to do with law and prisons and the like; he looked about him almost wildly.
"Jesse," he said in a whisper. "I know what to do. Creep under my couch and lie there quite still. Thomas is all right, and nobody else saw you come up, did they?"
"No one else saw me at all," Jesse replied, dropping his voice, and going down on his hands and knees, "better luck. I'll keep still, no fear, Master Ferdy," his boyish spirits already rising again at the idea of "doing the p'lice," "and they'd never dare look under your sofa."
He scrambled in, but put his head out again for a moment to whisper in an awestruck tone, "But oh, Master Ferdy, if they do come up here, please try to find out if Bill Turner's so badly hurt as they said. I know it can't be true that I did as bad as that."
All the same he was terribly frightened and remorseful. Ferdy scarcely dared to reply, for by this time a group of men and boys was coming up the drive, and a constable in front marched along as if he meant business, for as Ferdy watched them, he turned round and waved back the eight or ten stragglers who were following him, though he still held by the arm a thin, pale-faced little fellow whom he had brought with him all the way. This was Barney, poor Jesse's first lieutenant.
Another minute or two passed. Then hurrying steps on the stairs again, and Thomas reappeared, looking very excited.