Now at first the Smoutchy boys had not meant to leave Hugh John in the dungeon all night, but only to give him a thorough fright for his hardihood in daring to attack their citadel. But Nipper Donnan's natural resolution was ever towards cruelty of all sorts, and it was turned to adamant upon discovering that Donald, the captured hostage and original cause of conflict, had in some mysterious way escaped.
This unexpected success of the attacking party he attributed, of course, to Hugh John, whom, in spite of his youth, he well knew to be the leading spirit. Sir Toady Lion was never so much as suspected—a fact which would have pleased that doughty warrior but little had he known it.
In the afternoon Nipper had gone to Halkirk Tryst to bring home two bullocks, which Butcher Donnan had bought there the day before; but his father becoming involved in some critical cattle-dealing transaction, for which he was unable to obtain satisfaction in cash, resolved that Nipper should wait till the next day, when he hoped to be able to accompany him home in person. So engrossed was Nipper with the freaks of the fair, the Aunt-Sallies, the shooting-galleries, and miscellaneous side-shows and ghost illusions, that he quite forgot all about our hero immured in the dungeon of the Castle of Windy Standard. Even had he remembered, he would certainly have said to himself that some of the other boys would be sure to go and let him out (for which interference with his privileges he would assuredly punch their heads to-morrow!)—and that in any case it served the beggar right.
Probably, however, his father (had Nipper thought fit to mention the matter to him), would have taken quite a different view of the situation; for the butcher, with all his detestation of the owner of the Windy Standard estate, held Mr. Picton Smith in a wholesome awe which almost amounted to reverence.
So it came about that none approached the castle all that afternoon; for the boys of Nipper's band were afraid to venture upon the castle island in the absence of their redoubtable chief, while the servants of Windy Standard House sought for the vanished in quite other directions, being led astray by the innocent assertions of Toady Lion, who had last seen Hugh John defending himself gallantly against overwhelming numbers in the corner of the field nearest to the town, and at least half a mile as the crow flies from the castle on the island.
CHAPTER XX
THE SECRET PASSAGE.