d Baumgartner looked on as though
following the same wild train of thought, as though it did not seem so
wild to him, but extremely interesting; so that Pocket was quite
disappointed when he shook his head.

"A stowaway with an attack of asthma! I think I see my poor young fellow!
Why, they'd hear you wheezing in the hold, and you'd gasp out your whole
story before you were in the Bay of Biscay! No, no, my fellow; you've
taken your line, and you must stick to it, and stop with me till we can
think of something better than a long sea voyage. If you say you won't, I
say I'll make you--to save you from yourself--to save us both."

There was no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was fixed
and final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor's power to
make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped already; the
nearer he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to be given again.
So reasoned Pocket from the face and voice now dominating him more
powerfully than ever; but it is an interesting fact that his conclusion
neither cowed nor depressed him as it might have done. There was actually
an element of relief in his discomfiture. He had done his best to do his
duty. It was not his fault that responsibility had been wrested from his
shoulders, and an evil hour delayed. And yet there was a certain, an
immediate, a creature comfort in such delay, which was all the greater
because unsought by him; it was a comfort that he had both ways, as the
saying is, and from all points of view but that of his poor people
wondering what had become of him.

"If only they knew!" he cried; "then I shouldn't care. Let me write to
one of them! My mother needn't know; but I must write to one of the
others, and at least let them know I am alive and well. My sister would
keep my secret; she'd play the game all right, I promise you! And I'd
play any game you like if only you let me write a line to her!"

The doctor would not hear of it at first. Eventually he said he should
have to inspect the letter before it went; and this proved the thin edge
of consent. In the end it was arranged that Pocket should write what he
liked to his sister only, and that Baumgartner should read and enclose it
in a covering letter, so that everybody need not know it was a letter from
the missing boy. Baumgartner was to have it posted from St.
Martin's-le-Grand, to destroy all trace of a locality which he now r