No. 13 was open! We paused for a moment as we approached it. Hark! Certainly there was someone in the room. It seemed to me as though I weighed a million pounds and had only the strength of a kitten. Fascinated, we crept closer, although I do not see how the kitten in me lifted the great weight I felt myself to have. There was a dim light in the room from a small kerosene lantern. Louis Gaillard was there, standing tiptoe upon the pile of bricks. Was he trying to fit that awful noose around his neck again? I felt like screaming as Dee had in the morning, but no sound would come from my dry throat.
Louis' face, that could be seen in the light of the lantern, did not look like the face of one who meant to make away with himself. There was purpose in it, but it was the purpose of high resolve. Grasping the rope as high up as he could with one hand, with the other he gave it a sharp cut with a knife. Dee and I leaned against each other for support. The rope was down, and now the thing for us to do was get out of that building as fast as we could. Louis must never know we had been there. We blessed the wind, which made such a noise rattling the shutters and streamers of hanging wall paper that the boy remained absolutely unconscious of our presence. He had begun to destroy the pile of bricks as we crept away, taking them carefully back to the hearth where he had found them.
We sailed down the steps of that old hotel as hungry boarders might have done in days gone by "when they heard the dinner bell." We were out on the sea-wall and racing back to our friends before Louis had finished with the bricks, I am sure.
"Page," panted Dee, "don't you think Louis had lots of moral courage to go back there where he had so nearly come to grief and take down that rope and unpile those bricks?"
"Courage! I should say he had! I was nearly scared to death when I saw him there, weren't you?"
"I have never gone through such a moment in my life. It was worse than this morning, because this morning I did not know what to expect, while tonight I almost knew what was coming—the worst. When I saw the lantern and realized Louis was there, I could almost see him with the noose around his neck!"
Dee shivered and drew her coat more closely around her. Her face looked pale and pinched in the moonlight, while I was all in a glow from our race along the sea-wall.
"Dee, I believe you are all in."
"Oh, I'm all right—just a bit cold."
"All right, much! You are having a chill this very minute—you are, Dee—a nervous chill, and no wonder!"