“i must have a copy of that letter;” charles declared, emphatically.
“yes; as a lesson in french, it’s worth from twenty to thirty of mr. meadows’,” stephen chimed in.
he, however, had no great desire to obtain a copy and buzz over it. (steve always buzzed when he “studied.”)
“i don’t doubt that marmaduke will believe in it,” henry said, with pardonable conceit in his own production; “but the question is, will he act on it? i know if i should come upon such a petition, i should let somebody else do the rescuing, and fly the other way as if i were pursued by—”
“a demon!” steve interposed, grinning foolishly.
“no,” continued henry, “by worse than a demon—by an algebra!”
stephen hated the study of algebra—hated it with deadly hatred; hence he smiled in sympathy.
“yes,” charles commented, “most boys would be apt to run away; but marmaduke isn’t like most boys.”
“henry, there is one point i don’t quite understand,” george observed. “why do you say in the letter, ‘if you cannot rescue me, send this letter to my father’? suppose that marmaduke should take it into his head to send it! then—then—”
“well, george, i put that in to make the letter seem less like a fable. don’t you know that a person in trouble would naturally say or write something to that effect; and besides, right under that i wrote, ‘perhaps my father is dead.’ therefore, he will hardly send the appeal off to france; but if he speaks of it, use your wits and persuade him to hurry to the rescue.”
the plotters held their breath for admiration, and their honor for henry increased. to them he was a wiser and greater being than any of the grave heroes who figured in their dog’s-eared, mutilated histories—wiser than the great solon—deeper than the emissaries of mephistopheles—more[299] learned than—than—but here their well of eloquence ran dry, and they could not express themselves further.
will was quite happy now; his cousin had come; the plot was well under way; the genius who was to direct it was admired, honored, reverenced. it was glory enough for him to have such a phenomenon for a near relative.
but george was bold enough to point out another irregularity. said he: “look here, henry, we didn’t give any account of the journey from the coast to the prison! marmaduke is very particular to have little things explained; and that is passed by.”
“george, don’t be foolish;” will returned angrily. “henry couldn’t explain everything; and the letter is long enough as it is.”
“of course; no one can improve on it;” charles declared.
“leave that to marmaduke,” said steve. “his imagination will soon find the ways and means.”
“yes,” chimed in charles, “his imagination will supply all defects—but there are none. the letter is perfect perfection.”
“that about ‘the general’ is a happy thought,” stephen remarked. “marmaduke will snatch at that like a hungry hawk.”
“yes, i changed your draft a good deal, and added new points,” henry observed. “but it is greatly improved by them, i think,” he added complacently.
alas! henry was beginning to have a very good opinion of himself. two days before he was not aware that he was so clever.
but the sage, actuated by—what? seemed determined to criticize the letter still further. “henry,” said he, poring over the letter with knitted brows, “henry, near the end you have written, ‘if the reader is not able to make this out,’ and so on. henry,” smiling pleasantly, “i didn’t know you were an irishman before, but that sounds like it!”
henry was about to reply, but charles took up the defence,[300] saying: “george, give me that letter; you do nothing but find fault with it. don’t you see that marmaduke will take that passage as a piece of refined french na—nave—knavery! botheration! you know the word i mean, henry.”
“na?veté?” henry suggested.
“yes, that’s it. marmaduke will take it for na-a-a-a—. yes; for that;” he concluded, gulping down a sob, and becoming somewhat flushed and perturbed.
“charley, listen to a little sound advice,” henry said, with the air of a great philosopher. “in the first place, that isn’t the right word in the right place. second place, never speak in a foreign language, nor whisper even a syllable of it, till you know it, and not then, unless you are learning it, or unless it is necessary. some people who can write their address in french strike out in print in the village ‘weekly’ with half-a-dozen meaningless words, that they themselves don’t understand. but the printer, who knows even less, and cares for no one’s feelings, always makes an interesting muddle of it all. so, charley, take warning and steer clear of such nonsense. english is the best, as long as you are where it is spoken.”
all looked admiringly at the oracle, charley by no means angry at being thus reproved.
“how did you manage to get the pretty french names?” jim asked, innocently enough.
will scowled at the boy, but henry answered readily: “they are not real names, jim; only common nouns. i relied on marmaduke’s ignorance of french to bring in some rather uncommon words instead of names. besides, i didn’t know of any names long enough, and grand enough, and sonorous enough, to suit the occasion; but still, some of these words may be family names for all i know or care. first name, sauterelle, a grasshopper; second name, hirondelle, a swallow; patronymic, de la chaloupe, of the longboat. now bél?tre scélérat really means atrocious scoundrel; but scheming scoundrel sounds better in english—it has a true poetic ring. of course, boys, when he finds the letter and you help him[301] to make it out, you will read the words as they are in the letter, not as i have explained them.”
the plotters’ admiration knew no bounds. the substitution of nouns for names was, in their eyes, the very acme of wit; and henry was no longer an ordinary hero, but a veritable demi-god.
how learned this boy must be, and how ignorant they must seem to him! in fact, this so worked on the feelings of one boy (it is immaterial which one, gentle reader,—no, we defy you to guess which boy it was) that, in order to demonstrate he, at least, knew the difference between nouns and names, he laughed so hard, so monotonously, and so patiently, that long-headed henry perceived the cause, and was, very rightly, disgusted.
“well, boys,” said henry, “i haven’t seen the prison-house yet, and if you will bundle me up in your disguises, we’ll set out for it, ‘the wigwam of the seven sleepers,’ as george says stephen calls it, and arrange everything as it should be and is to be.”
at this time they were in mr. lawrence’s garden. will ran to the house and soon came back with a headgear which charles compared to a russian jew’s turban, but henry said it looked like a knight-errant’s sun-bonnet. then steve, not wishing to be outdone, said it was one of father time’s cast-off nightcaps. then, having fitted it, whatever it may have been, to henry’s head, and pinned it fast to his coat collar,—he had first changed coats with george, and turned his neck-tie wrong side out,—the plotters declared that he was admirably disguised, and they set forward in high spirits. however well henry might plot, they were not adepts in the art of disguising; and this strange garb, far from concealing henry’s features, served only to attract the attention of passers-by.
but they had not gone far when henry pulled his scotch cap out of his pocket and put it forcibly on his head. then charles mildly suggested that if a handkerchief were tied so as to pass over one eye, henry might stroll through the streets of his native city without danger of being recognized.
“well,” henry said, reluctantly, “if you can tie it to[302] give me the appearance of a wounded soldier, go ahead; but if it makes me look like an old woman sick with the neuralgia, i’ll—i’ll—no, you mus’n’t.”
a handkerchief had no sooner been tied over henry’s eye so as to suit all concerned, than it occurred to stephen that one amendment more was needful to make the disguise complete.
“your ears are peculiar, henry,” he said, “and very pretty. now, marmaduke always notices people’s ears,—at least, i guess he does,—so let me pull the flaps of the sun-bonnet clear over them.”
but good-natured henry was only human,—or perhaps if his ears were so pretty, and somebody else had said they were, he did not wish to hide them,—and now he turned his one blazing eye full upon the boy, and said, almost fiercely: “stephen, let me alone! i can barely manage to work my way along the road, as it is! don’t you know, steve,” he added mildly, “that it is hard enough for a fellow to get along in this world with all his five senses in full play?”
“it is too bad for henry to go all the way there and back twice in one day,” charles kindly observed. “couldn’t we manage it for him to go only once, say in the afternoon, and then wait till marmaduke and the rest come on?”
“no; i want to go now, with you all;” henry said, firmly. “suppose that i should take a pailful of supper with me, and not go till the afternoon—what if marmaduke shouldn’t come, after all! something might happen, you know, that he could not or would not come; and then,” putting on a comical smile, “i should have to stay in that dreadful haunted house for who knows how long?”
“yes, it is better for henry to get familiar with the old ruin while we are with him—i mean, it is better for us to go with him,” will said. “then to-night, about half an hour before marmaduke and the rest of us start, he and stephen will leave in advance of us, with a bundle of disguises and lanterns; so that when we, the rescuers, arrive, the place will be lighted and the captive clothed properly.”
[303]
“and the priest shaved,” steve chimed in.
“exactly,” henry commented. “and, steve, i can meanwhile drill you to act the part of a priest, shaved or not shaved. don’t fret about the extra travelling, boys,” he added; “for if my boots dilapidate while i’m here, i’ll add them to the pile of rubbish in ‘nobody’s house,’ and patronize one of your shoemakers.”
in due time the plotters arrived before the house. it was no longer the grim wreck described to the reader at the time the boys first visited it. no; thanks to their industry and ingenuity it was in much better repair; and, yes, it looked very much like—like a prison?—no! very much like a gigantic hen-coup.
“why,” henry cried in pleased surprise, “i wasn’t so far out of the way after all when i ventured to write about its being fortified equal to a fortress! but say, boys, where did you get the iron bars for the windows?”
“irons!” charles echoed, in ecstasy. “if you take ’em for iron bars, marmaduke certainly will! no, henry; no iron there; nothing but painted laths nailed on. we had two good reasons for putting on those laths; first, because in nailing up a crack every pane of glass left shivered itself all to flinders, and therefore the empty window-frames had to be hidden; and next, we put them there to make the place look like a grated prison.”
“and they do;” declared henry, stripping off his “disguise” and heaving a sigh of relief.
“yes, and they made me nail on all their laths,” said stephen, “because i was foolish enough to say i could straddle a window-sill and whittle out a steamboat, or do anything else. you see that top window to the right?—well, i was sitting there, struggling to drive an obstinate nail, when suddenly i pitched head over heels down to the ground!”
“hurt yourself?” henry inquired.
“no-o-o; but their hammer disappeared and lost itself ever since!” steve chuckled.
“stephen wouldn’t consider that he was in a post of honor,” charles observed, “and when the hammer could not be found, he said, ‘serves you right.’”
[304]
“i guess you would have said it, too, if you had had your best coat-pocket and flap torn off on a nail that you pretended to drive!” stephen wrathfully retorted.
“what? did you have an encounter with a nail in your way down?” henry inquired.
“i did.”
“steve didn’t tell us about all those losses,” charles commented; “but he said he was going home, and he went.”
“it’s the first i’ve heard about the coat-pocket,” the sage observed.
“hurrah! where did you make the acquaintance of this awful door!” henry exclaimed. “it—it looks like the door of a castle in the air.”
“no, henry, it’s too strong for that,” will corrected. “that door used to be our raft; but we had to make a door, and there was nothing else to make it of; so we hauled it up stream, pounced on it, and tore it all to pieces.”
this was too true. the gallant old raft, which had served so useful a purpose as a source of amusement, had been sacrificed by the remorseless plotters to fill up the gap in the front doorway. but they, in their eagerness to further their daring scheme, would not have hesitated to destroy anything to which they could lay claim.
“it was too bad to waste a good raft on this old hen-house,” henry observed.
“oh, a prison without a door would be rather too much for even marmaduke;” will replied. “and the timbers of the raft are here yet, and we can build it over again next week.”
“henry,” said stephen, who had quite recovered his equilibrium, “it is in front of this door that the sentries do the patrolling, and ground their muskets, and——and——what else do sentries do, george?”
“will,” said henry, grimly, as his eyes roved over the yard, or orchard, “i guess it would need several pretty smart and nimble sentries to prevent any one from escaping from this ‘inclosure.’”
then they opened the door and passed in. by the[305] way, there was something very remarkable about that door—so remarkable, in fact, that the writer, who has had great experience in the building of playhouses (don’t look for this word in a dictionary, o foreigner, but ask any little boy to interpret it for you,) here pauses to note it. though made by boys, it not only played smoothly on its hinges, but even entered the door-case, and admitted of being fastened!
“it must have cost you fellows a good deal to fit up this old hulk,” henry remarked, as the boys showed him proudly through the house.
“cost!” stephen exclaimed warmly. “i should think it did cost! besides that hammer that i lost, an old worn-out axe perished somewhere around here, after will had hewed a pair of new boots all to pieces while dressing the new door. among the five of us, we’ve worn out two suits of clothes, and made three hats ashamed of themselves, just since we started to tinker up this prison house. i’ve used all the salve and plaster in our house, and the day before you came i got another cut. that reminds me, henry, when will hewed his new boots he cut his big toe nearly clean off—come here, and i’ll show you the bloody mark.”
“never mind,” said henry. “i’ve just noticed, steve, that the doors and walls and windows are thick with bloody gore.”
“well, it’s all ours,” stephen declared. “we’ve broken a band-box full of old tools and things, and destroyed all our jack-knives. we have used heaps of nails, and—and—all sorts of things. henry, we have suffered!”
really, in heroism and fortitude these boys equalled the ancient spartans; for they would have encountered any danger, undergone any hardship, to secure the success of their plot. yes, they toiled as if they had a better cause in view.
the “imposter” was next unearthed. it excited henry’s liveliest admiration; and steve said, as they deposited it in its hiding-place, “we’ll make it hot for you to-night, you old atrocious scoundrel, you!”
[306]
“why, this is mr. atrocious scoundrel, isn’t he, boys?” henry said, beaming with delight.
“of course he is,” the rest answered promptly.
but hold! did not the letter state that this personage was away from home, that is from the prison? surely, here was an oversight! here was a quicksand! in good truth, the plot was too much for those boys to manage, and it had turned their brain.
it had turned their brain. mark that, gentle reader, for it may help you to understand what is to follow shortly.
a guilty look was on jim’s face whilst the boys spoke thus, but it escaped their notice. no, they did not suspect that there was treachery in the camp—least of all, that jim was the traitor.
then henry donned his various “disguises,” and the little band of little plotters set out for the village. but henry had not taken fifteen steps when he stumbled headlong over a submerged wheel-barrow (submerged in dense grass and rank weeds, gentle reader) and fell heavily.
“what the mischief!” he ejaculated. “is this a demoralized sentinel, or a trap set by the hobgoblins?”
“it’s a wheel-barrow, henry,” will explained, “that belongs to this place.”
“oh it belongs here, does it?” henry asked, struggling to rise.
“yes, it’s a fixture, henry, a fixture;” piped up steve, who had stumbled upon this word in a time-worn document a few days before.
then henry essayed to trundle it out of the way; but its wheel howled so piteously for grease that he desisted, saying in disgust, “why this is as rusty and as worthless as an heir-loom.”
“oh, we mostly turn it upside down and straighten nails on it,” steve said, deprecatingly.
“now,” said henry, as they strode on, “when you rescuers come, i shall be just behind the front door, and stephen will be in another room or up-stairs.”
“all right,” replied one of them.
as they were proceeding towards home, will suddenly espied marmaduke walking leisurely up the river. although[307] they had prepared for such a contingency they did not expect it. did they put faith in their “disguise,” and advance calmly to meet him? not for one moment! instantly the greatest consternation prevailed, and they stopped and stared at each other in blank hopelessness.
“oh, this is awful!” groaned charles. “our—plot—”
“is ruined!” steve gasped.
“o dear!” sighed will. “henry, do—do you suppose—”
marmaduke continued to advance, and presently he hailed them.
then will lost all control of himself, and cried wildly: “oh, henry, we must run for it!”
“yes, henry; unblind your eye, and run!” steve counselled.
the sage, who had just hit upon a stratagem to get out of the difficulty, endeavored to restore order. but he was too late, as usual; and so, seeing that the boys were bent on flight, he had sufficient presence of mind to shout: “split, boys, split; so that when marma—”
but henry had already torn off the handkerchief, and he and the other demoralized plotters were flying as though pursued by a regiment of light-armed bél?tre scélérats.
when will and his relative gained the security of their own chamber, the latter said frankly: “well, there is a lot of nice fellows here, and i like them well.”
“yes,” said will, “but you haven’t seen marmaduke yet!”
“will, i never ran away from anybody before—and this fellow is only a harmless and innocent schoolboy!”
