Another door was visited and another boy stepped forth to hear the same news, with the order:
“Follow Joe! Wait at the door.”
Two more cages let out their actually trembling boys, and now all five of them stood in line at the main doorway.
Jim looked out and turned and raised his hand. In a moment more, that door was shut behind them and four of them had made their silent, stocking-footed way, to another, similar barrier, at the end of the hall. Their captain was leaning over the slumbering watchman, for in his relaxed hand, almost let go of, was a bunch of keys, and to take them away without waking him was a delicate piece of work. It was more than that, for Jim felt that it was something very like stealing. He would not have had one of the Managers see him do it for the world. He felt mean, even after he got the keys, but he seemed to get over it while he was opening the outer door with one of them. Then the hardest thing to do was to carry back the Whole bunch and put it silently down by the watchman, so that he need not miss them.
Jim did it, and he felt less like a thief after giving back those keys, but in a half minute more he and his friends were out on the parade-ground, clustering close to the shadowy wall of the engine house. They had accomplished a great deal, but they had not yet escaped, by any means.
IX
GETTING OVER THE WALL
There were lights, here and there, in some of the windows of the House of Refuge buildings and there were others, like street-lamps, outside, but all was silence.
The boys themselves had hardly dared to whisper, but now one of them asked: