CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The sun shone through the trees. Tim was chilled to the bone. He wished he had an overcoat.
Red gave no sign of waking. Tim thought, Today is Friday. He unbuttoned his blouse and pulled out a little black book marked DIARY 1863. It was closed with a tab that slipped through a loop. He pulled out the tab and riffled through the pages. The first half of the book was filled with entries, but the period of imprisonment was almost blank. On some of the pages he had penciled “Letter from Kate” or “News of home,” but he’d long since neglected the daily entries. It had made him unhappy to count the endless chain of wasted days.
He found the page and the date, Friday, December 11, and he took out his pencil and wrote:
“First day of freedom since last July. How long will it last?” He flicked through the pages ahead and came across Friday, December 25. He thought, with a smile, just three more weeks to buy a present for Kate.
Tim heard a crackling of twigs and a rustling of leaves behind the trees at a little distance. He lay perfectly still. At first there was no sound, then the crackling resumed, a little nearer. It seemed as though someone, knowing they were there, was approaching with caution.
Tim shook Red’s shoulder gently. Red turned, sighed sleepily and opened one eye. Tim pressed his finger to his lips, and Red jerked his head off the ground and listened. Again there was no sound. Then the crackling came again, this time slightly farther off.
Red’s eyes had a haunted look, as if he were dreaming a very bad dream. He whispered, “I can’t go back to jail again. Let’s make a run for it.”
Tim shook his head. They lay still for what must have been a quarter of an hour.
Tim pointed out a gray-clad soldier behind some undergrowth, but as they looked the soldier seemed to dissolve. “We’re having hallucinations,” he said. “The noise I heard could have been any one of a thousand things.”