Fighting for fortune or, Making a place for himself
walls and demanding release.
He was falsely accused; circumstances had encircled him in the deepest
guilt. His good name was gone forevermore.
No, no, he was innocent, and all the prison bars and contumely in
Christendom cannot long subdue the noble soul that, unjustly accused,
looks to heaven for counsel and aid.
The night must break some time--patience! patience!
Gradually a calmer sense of hopefulness and confidence ensued.
Then, through the long and weary vigils of the night, Dean Mercer
sought to learn whose the evil hand could be; whence the motive that
had wrought all this ruin and disaster, and had laid it to his charge.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TALK OF ESCAPE.
“No. 301!”
“That’s me,” murmured Dean.
“No. 1017!”
“Here, sir!” spoke Marcus Ellison.
Both boys looked concerned, and exchanged glances. They mutually feared
that the broken ventilator had been discovered, but they were mistaken.
“Report to the warden for duty,” ordered the guard, and he passed on.
The two boys went to the office. The warden regarded them carelessly.
“You understand gardening, you two,” he said. “The guard reports
excellent work. Do you like it?”
Marcus answered for both.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, so long as you obey rules, you two may have the exclusive work.
When it rains you can patch up the trellises in the tool shed.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Deserve the favor, that’s all. It’s the easiest and pleasantest work
in the place.”
The boys found it so. They were delighted. That morning they plodded in
the garden so faithfully that the sentinel on the wall ceased to watch
them.
About one o’clock it began to rain. Marcus told the sentinel of the
warden’s order.
“All right,” he said.
“What luck!” ejaculated Dean as they entered the tool shed. “Here we
can talk unwatched and undisturbed.”
“Yes, but talk low.”
“And you sort of watch out for fear some one might come upon us
unexpectedly.”
They were out of sight completely of the guard. Dean began to pleat
some cord into trellis-nets, and Marcus sharpened the pruning knives on
a whetstone.
And they talked as they worked, casually at first, but finally Dean
said, in an explosive tone of voice:
“Marcus!”
“Well, Dean.”
“No chance to smuggle out a letter from here?”
“I fear not.”
“We must wait until letter day?”
“Yes.”
“And that will be?”
“In three weeks.”
“And then?”
“It may or may not go, just as the deputy warden pleases.”
Dean looked worried and thoughtful.
“If it wasn’t for father I shouldn’t care so much,” said Marcus. “It
seems rough on us both; you just as you were getting started and I with
the papers and money in my possession to clear father.”
“Who could have robbed you?”
“It must have been done by enemies of my father. You, too, are the
victim of a plot.”
“Who could have so worked against me?”
“I could find your enemies easier than I could mine.”
“I have no enemies.”
“None at all?”
“A few boyish foes, maybe, as all boys have.”
“Who are they?”
“Why, I suppose about the only boys at Millville who really dislike me
are Abner Littleton----”
“Much?”
“He wasn’t very bad, but Rodney Darringford----”
“Go ahead,” said Marcus thoughtfully.
“And Tim Downey----”
“Are they chums?”
“N-no. Say, Marcus!” exclaimed Dean with a start, “what makes you ask
me that question?”
“Answer me! Are they chums?”
“Not exactly; but, come to think of it, they both owe me a grudge, and
they were on the same boat--the _Warrior_--that brought Jack Carboy and
myself from Millville to Springfield.”
“Ah! they were, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Note anything suspicious?”
“Not particularly.”
“Anything not particularly?”
“They spoke to one another.”
“What else?”
“I thought I saw Rodney give Tim some money.”
“And the Darringfords hate Judge Oglesby, don’t they?” persisted the
shrewd Marcus, a growing suspicion in his excited eye.
“They don’t like him.”
“And his new steamer would hurt their business?”
“Immensely.”
“I thought so. Dean Mercer, those boys had a hand in the burning of the
_Spray_. When we get away from here we’ll try and find out.”
“Eh?”
“When we get away.”
“When we do!”
“Which will be soon.”
“You’re joking!”
“I ain’t.”
“Get away from here?”
“Yes.”
“Escape?”
“Escape.”
“That will not be very soon, I fear,” sighed Dean dejectedly.
“Oh, yes, it will!” replied Marcus with a strangely excited face.
“If we only could!”
“We can.”
“But----”
“Have you pluck?”
“Lots of it.”
“Endurance?”
“Try me.”
“Then we’ll escape!”
“When?”
“To-night!”
CHAPTER XIX.
DIGGING THEIR WAY OUT.
Dean Mercer stared at his companion in startled wonderment.
“To-night?” he repeated vaguely. “Escape from here to-night?”
“Yes,” reaffirmed Marcus deliberately.
“But the guard--the walls?”
“I’ll attend to all that. I mean it, Dean! I’ve been planning at it a
score of ways. To-day I made a great discovery. What you have told me
decides me. My father needs my help. I’m going to escape to try and
find the papers that will prove his innocence. Are you with me?”
“Am I?” cried the excited Dean. “Oh! if we only could escape! Look
here!”
“No; look there!”
Marcus had pointed to one corner of the tool shed. A large round wooden
cover lay there.
“What is it?” asked Dean curiously.
“A well cover.”
“And the well?”
“Was dried up long ago. I peered in to-day. There’s the first move
toward escape!”
Dean Mercer was greatly excited as Marcus detailed his hopes and plans.
The well, he said, was dry at the bottom, twenty feet down. What he
proposed to do was to throw in two shovels, jump in themselves, and
after pulling the cover back into place, dig.
“Dig? Where to?” asked the dubious Dean.
“To liberty.”
“How?”
“Straight under the wall of the yard. We are within ten feet of it.
Then, once past it, we dig upward, burrow to the surface and run for
it. Hist! Some one is coming!”
A burly form blocked the entrance to the shed a minute later. It was
the warden, and he glanced commendingly at the two busy boys.
“Sort of damp and cold here, ain’t it, boys?” he asked.
“We don’t feel it, sir,” replied Marcus.
“Well, there’s a lot of new flower-seeds in the library to sort; so you
can go there and finish the day at it.”
Marcus looked disappointed, and Dean realized that their schemes were
nipped in the bud, for that day at least.
There was nothing left but to obey. They passed through the hospital
ward, where the nurse was attending to one of the sick boy convicts,
and put in the afternoon in grim silence at a table in the library,
sorting out the new garden seeds.
“Get all the bread you can,” whispered Marcus as they went for their
supper and then to their cells.
Then they were again at the ventilator, in low and cautious tones
discussing the vital theme of the hour--escape.
Marcus had a determination that even Dean could not equal.
“Get more bread in the morning and stow it in your clothes,” said
Marcus.
“What for?”
“We may need it.”
“In the well?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your plan?”
“We will probably be sent to the garden in the morning.”
“I suppose so.”
“The warden will not follow us to see if we go there. Then all depends
on our reaching the tool house without the sentinel seeing us.”
“What’s that for?”
“If we can slip into the tool house without his seeing us, he will
suppose that we were not sent to work in the garden.”
“I understand.”
“We get into the well with the shovels at once.”
“Yes.”
“And begin work.”
“But we will be missed?”
“At noon probably.”
“And search be made?”
“I expect that.”
“They may look in the well.”
“Possibly.”
“And then?”
“We can wait, then.”
“We will be safe in the tunnel we have dug by that time.”
“But we can’t escape until dark?”
“We can wait, then.”
“And if they discover us----”
“We’ve tried our best, that’s all, and that ends it!” replied Marcus
philosophically.
“To the garden!” was the order of the two boys the next morning, and
Marcus led the way toward it.
“Wait!” he whispered. “Now, then, the sentinel is walking in the
opposite direction.”
“To the tool house?”
“Yes.”
The boys reached the shed. Glancing from its window Marcus said:
“He never saw us. Now then, off with the cover!”
This was removed.
“Throw in the shovels.”
This, too, was done.
“Get in!”
“It’s terribly, dark!”
“So much the better.”
“And close!”
“We must stand that!”
Five minutes later the two boys were at the bottom of the well, and
Marcus had in his descent pulled the cover into place.
They at once attacked the side of the well, removing the loose bricks
and mortar, and then digging west, covered them up with the earth.
By noon, although nearly suffocated and pained from their position,
they had dug some fifteen feet to the west.
Then there was a forced wait and a careful estimate of time and a
wonder as to how far the quest for them would be pursued.
They lunched on the bread that Dean had brought, and crept back to the
end of the tunnel nearest to the well shaft to get as much fresh air as
was possible, and to decide on fading daylight from the chinks in the
well cover.
No one seemed to visit the well. They had no indication as to the fact
that their escape had been discovered.
What had really occurred was that the warden had that day gone away
until evening.
The sentinel supposed that the boys had not been sent to work in the
garden that day, the deputy warden imagined them to be at work there,
and when they did not appear at dinner, the guard naturally supposed
that they were remaining away under the warden’s orders.
At six o’clock the warden returned, however, and the boys were missed.
The garden was first visited, and the tool shed glanced into, but
nothing more, for the sentinel affirmed that he had seen nothing of the
fugitives in that locality that day.
A general alarm was given, a general search made, every nook and corner
of the prison yard was looked into, but no trace of the boys could be
found.
All the evening the quest was kept up, but it proved to be a fruitless
one.
About an hour after dusk Marcus Ellison uttered a gasp of relief and
excitement.
His spade had pierced the ground over his head. The dirt rained down
over them and he looked up and peered around.
The grim walls of the prison showed near at hand, the road beyond, and
at its edge a thicket.
“We must creep or run across the road without the sentinels on the
walls seeing us,” he said to Dean.
“Can we do it?”
“Yes; the darkness favors us.”
“I am ready!”
“Come on!”
They made a quick dash across the road and paused in the shadow of the
trees beyond.
The prison looked silent and serene. Dimly they made out sentinels
here and there on the walls, facing the blustering wind and partially
blinded by it from viewing the road.
“Safe!” murmured Marcus in thrilling tones.
“Free!” breathed Dean wildly.
Then they sped through the forest, and the distant lights of the reform
school faded further and further away.
In the eyes of the law they were fugitive criminals, seeking to baffle
justice.
In reality they were two brave, undaunted boys, seeking liberty only to
work out a destiny that demanded their attention--two loyal hearts with
a great motive in life, the righting of a great wrong, a battle against
villainy, in the interests of innocence and the right!
CHAPTER XX.
THE FLIGHT FROM PRISON.
Dean Mercer was older and better educated than Marcus Ellison, and yet
the latter took the lead in the first stage of their hurried flight
from the vicinity of the reform school as he had done in the initial
steps of the plan of escape from its gloomy precincts.