He turned to the boy about to refuse the request; and then suddenly came another thought—she knew the danger as well as he! She knew what it meant to go beyond limits, and yet she had sent for him at this strange hour of the night, and for him, too, a comparative stranger. Surely, it must be a desperate matter, a matter in which to fail was sheer cowardice. At the same time with the thought there rose up before him a vision of a certain very sweet and winsome face; and when he spoke to the boy his answer was:
"I'll go."
He stepped to the desk, and wrote hastily on a piece of paper this note to Texas:
"I'll be back in time to fight. Explain later. Trust me.
"Mark."
This he laid on the bureau, and then silently but quickly put on his clothes and stepped to the door with the boy. Mark halted for a moment and glanced about the room to make sure that all was well and that Texas was asleep, and then he softly shut the door and turned to the boy.
"How are we going to get out?" he demanded.
"Come," responded the other, setting the example by creeping along on tiptoe. "Come."
They halted again at the top of the stairway to wait until the sentry had gone down, and then stole down and dodged outside the door just as the latter turned and marched back. Flattened against the wall, they waited breathlessly, while he approached nearer and nearer, and then he halted, wheeled and went on. At the same moment the two crept quickly across the area and vanished in the darkness of the sally port.
"Now," said the drum boy, as they came out on the other side, "here we are. Come on."