that,
covered by the darkness, it was comparatively an easy task to drop down
unnoticed, though afterwards it was quite a different thing.

"Then he has gone!" said Frank softly; and he shrank away from the
window, to stand thinking about how the lad could have managed to get
away unseen by the sentries.

Thoughts came faster than ever; and he, as it were, put himself in his
companion's position, and unconsciously enacted almost exactly what had
taken place. For Frank mentally went through what he would have done
under the circumstances if he had been a prisoner who wished to get
away.

He would have waited till all was still, and when the sentry at the door
was pacing up and down, and his footsteps on the stone landing would
help to dull any noise he made, he would slip out of the window, drop on
to his toes, and then go down on all fours, and creep along close to the
wall beneath the windows, right for the piazza-like place, and along
beneath the arches, making not for either of the entrance gates, but for
the private garden. There he would be stopped by the wall; but there
was a corner there with a set of iron spikes pointing downward to keep
people from climbing over, but which to an active lad offered good
foot-and hand-hold, by means of which he felt that he could easily get
to the top. From there he could drop down, go right across the garden
to the outer wall, which divided it from the Park, and get on that
somewhere by the help of one of the trees. Once on the top, he could
choose his place, and crawl to it like a cat. Then all he had to do was
to lower himself by his hands, and drop down, to be free to walk
straight away, and take refuge with his friends.

"Oh, I could get out as easily as possible, if I wanted to," muttered
Frank. "Poor Drew! what's to become of him now?"

Frank stood thinking still, and saw it all more and more plainly. Drew
would know where his father was, and go and join him. And then?

Frank shuddered, for he seemed to see ruin and misery, and the
destruction of all prospects for his friend; and, in spite of the
indignation he felt against him for his deceit, his heart softened, and
he muttered, as he turned to go once more into the bed-chamber:

"Poor old Drew! I did like him so much, after all."

As the boy entered the bedroom something caught his eye on the dressing
table, and he looked at it wonderingly. It was the book he had been
reading in the other room; the boo