Stranleigh replied dreamily, gazing into the fire.
“Oh, well, I think my advice doesn’t amount to much, as you hinted. It is none of my affair. You are a most capable body of men, I have no doubt, only the fact has been concealed from me up to date. I find I am developing the vice of talking too much, so I’m going to turn in. Good-night!”
But the fall of soot had suggested to Stranleigh a method of escape.
VII.—THE END OF THE CONTEST.
A wood fire is an evanescent thing, having none of the calm determination of coal combustion. A wood fire requires constant replenishing, and that in the bunk house did not receive this attention. When the men, tired with doing nothing, overcome by the lassitude enduring an empty day had caused, turned into sleep, the wood fire, left to itself, crumbled into a heap of ashes. The guarding of Stranleigh became more perfunctory as time passed. He proved to be a model prisoner, and usually the sentinel at the door fell into peaceful slumber as night wore on. On the particular evening Stranleigh chose for his attempt, Jim Dean sat on the chair against the door. Jim’s jaw worked so much during the day, he talked so incessantly, emptying his mind of all it contained, that he was naturally exhausted when his turn for watching came. Each of the men slumbered more or less soundly at his post, but the confident Jim outdid them all, so Stranleigh selected him as the man destined to hold the empty bag.
It was two hours after midnight when his lordship slipped down from his bunk. The fire had long since gone out, and the stone chimney was reasonably cool. The climbing of that ample flue presented no difficulty to an athletic young man who in his time had ascended the Matterhorn. The inside of the chimney offered to the amateur sweep walls of rough stone, which projected here and there, forming an effective, if unequal ladder. He attained the top with such ease that he wondered he had remained so long a prisoner. Descending the roof silently, he let himself down to the top of the lean-to which acted as kitchen and supply store, and dropped from that elevation lightly to the ground. It was a night of clear moonlight, and Stranleigh smiled to think how nearly he must represent the popular idea of the devil, covered as he was with soot from head to foot.
He made directly down the hill to the farm house by the stream, and risked a few minutes of time in washing his face in the rapid current. He now took off his boots, the better to enact the part of burglar. The doors of the house, he knew, were never locked. First he secured his favourite magazine rifle and a large quantity of cartridges, then as, after all, he was entitled to the board he paid for, he penetrated softly to the kitchen. Here he secured a couple of loaves of bread and a cooked ham, together with some other things he wanted, including a supply of tobacco, and thus overloaded as he had rarely been in his life before, he stole softly outside, slipped his feet into his boots, and slowly climbed the hill to the silver cavern. Depositing within his goods and chattels, he examined his store carefully to learn whether there was anything more he needed to stand a siege.
Bright as was the moonlight outside, the cavern was pitch dark, so Stranleigh determined on another expedition to the house, and he brought back a bunch of candles and an armful of bedclothes.