"I'm glad to hear that, Jo; it's what has been on my own mind all the morning. But Dick Price, he is not convinced that he deserves to escape. Now you tell him all you know about Gascoyne, and I'll tell him all I know; and if he don't believe us, Alice and Poopy will tell him all they know; and if that won't do, you and I will take him up by the legs and pitch him into the sea!"
"That bein' how the case stands, fire away," said Dick Price, with a grin, sitting down on the grass and busily filling his pipe.
Dick was not so hard to be convinced as Corrie had feared. The glowing eulogiums of Bumpus, and the earnest pleadings of Alice, won him over very soon. He finally agreed to become one of the conspirators.
"But how is the thing to be done?" asked Corrie, in some perplexity.
"Ah! that's the p'int," observed Dick, looking profoundly wise.
"Nothing easier," said Bumpus, whose pipe was by this time keeping pace with that of his new friend. "The case is as clear as mud. Here's how it is. Gascoyne is in limbo; well, we are out of limbo. Good. Then, all we've got for to do is to break into limbo and shove Gascoyne out of limbo, and help him to escape. It's all square, you see, lads."
"Not so square as you seem to think," said Henry Stuart, who at that moment stepped from behind the stem of the tree, which had prevented the party from observing his approach.
"Why not?" said Bumpus, making room for the young man to sit beside Alice on the grass.
"Because," said Henry, "Gascoyne won't agree to escape."
"Not agree for to escape!"