CHAPTER XXII
IN PRISON AND OUT
The man who had been in the cellar and who had escaped, had not been caught, as one of the officers of the court-martial had intimated. But he had been heard from, and in the most unexpected manner.
Late the evening before, an old Canadian, living in the most wretched quarter of Quebec, had appeared at the headquarters of the officers with a note, which he said had been given to him by a man, muffled up in a military cloak, whom he had met outside of the city, while bringing in a load of firewood.
“The man gave me no time to speak with him,” said the Canadian, in French. “He thrust this into my hand, made me promise to deliver it here to-night, pressed this silver piece in my palm, and then rode off on horseback at a wild gallop.”
“Was he a French soldier?”
“I believe, sir, he was,” answered the old Canadian. “But he was dirty and unshaven and looked as if he had not eaten his fill for a week or more.”
The note thus strangely brought to light ran as follows, although written in French:
“To General Murray:
“I am a Frenchman leaving Quebec, an honest man, but your enemy in war. I write this to save the young soldier who was caught in the cellar of the goldsmith’s shop. He is innocent and the man who knocked him down is guilty. I write this at my own peril, because I cannot stand idly by and see the innocent suffer.
“Yours in truth,
“L. C. G.”
The note was a mere scrawl, written on a bit of coarse paper and unsealed.
General Murray was much mystified by the communication, and spoke of it to several of his brother officers.
“I believe it is genuine,” said one. “The man was probably a French spy.”
“It is more likely a fraud,” said another. “A fraud gotten up by one of Morris’s friends to clear him.”
Here were the two sides of the matter, and General Murray did not know which side to believe. The examination of Henry threw no new light on the affair, and it was then that one of the officers suggested, in a whisper, that Prent be made to believe that the stranger in the cellar had been caught. The outcome of this the reader already knows.
Henry had been removed before the stranger was mentioned, and he knew nothing of how nearly Prent had come to breaking down and exposing himself.
From the sounds which reached him in his prison, Henry knew that something unusual had occurred to break the quiet monotony of army life in the captured city. Soldiers were hurrying in various directions, and he heard some artillery being dragged down the street by six or eight horses. Drums were rolling, and from a great distance he imagined he heard the sound of firing through the clear, nipping air.
Ever since the English had taken Quebec and signified their intention of holding it, at any cost, there had been rumors that the enemy were coming to the attack before the winter was over. The alarm came in November, when the news went flying in all directions that General Lévis was marching toward the city, at the head of fifteen thousand men.
“He means to capture the city, and has sworn to dine here with his army on Christmas day,” was the report.
The guard was strengthened, and the watchfulness of the outposts increased. But Lévis failed to appear, for the simple reason that he was by no means ready to make an attack. Then the holidays came and went quietly, and for a few weeks the alarm subsided.
The main outposts at this time were at St. Foy, and at Old Lorette. At each place a strong guard was placed, for the French were not far distant, and bent on doing all the damage possible to the English.
Old Lorette had now been attacked by a body of French regulars, who came up when least expected, and drove off a large herd of cattle upon which the British had levied. This made the rangers in that vicinity very angry. A hasty plan against the French was arranged, and just as hastily carried out, and the enemy fell back with one or two men wounded, leaving the rangers to re-gather the cattle, that had in the meantime strayed away in various directions.
But it was not this firing that Henry heard. The French had come up during a storm and taken possession of Point Levi, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence. They dared the English to come out and meet them, and a detachment under Major Dalling was sent over the river on the ice, which was now thick enough to bear almost any weight. A sharp skirmish followed, and the French were beaten back. A few days later there was another encounter, in which General Murray himself took part, and also a detachment of the Highlanders, and this time the enemy fled in terror, leaving a handful of their men to be captured.
During these exciting days nobody came near Henry but the prison guards, and the majority of these soldiers were rough fellows who had neither sympathy nor pity for the youthful prisoner.
“It’s a bad hole ye have got yourself into,” said one. “An’ if ye are hung ’twill but serve ye right.”
“’Tis hung he should be,” said another. “A thief is no better than a murderer.” This fellow had charge of the food served to Henry, and he gave the youth stuff which was scarcely fit to eat.
As the days went by Henry grew more miserable, and to tease him one of the guards told another, in Henry’s hearing, that he had heard the prisoner was soon to dance upon nothing, as a warning to other thieves.
It was a cruel joke, and gotten off so seriously that Henry was much inclined to believe the report. That night he could not sleep, and when he arose in the morning his face wore a cold, calculating look that had never been there before.
“They shan’t hang me,” he thought bitterly. “I am innocent and I won’t suffer—not if I can help it. What will mother and the others say, if they hear I was hanged for a thief?”
A day later it snowed heavily, and the guards around the house were more out of humor than ever. They were not allowed to smoke, but did so on the sly, and one man drank liberally of some rum which one of the detail brought in from somewhere.
Henry was watching his chance as a hawk watches young chickens, and late that afternoon noticed that the guard seemed unusually drowsy. The man sat on a bench in a front room of the improvised prison, and if he did not sleep he was certainly far from being wide awake.
There was a window in Henry’s room. It had been nailed up, but one window pane was broken, letting in cold air that nearly froze him to death during the night time. Outside several slats of wood had been placed across the window, which happened to be without the heavy wooden shutters so common at that period.
Through the broken window pane Henry had worked at two of the slats and now had them much loosened. As night came on he noticed that the guard still dozed. The man’s cap had fallen on the floor, and his heavy coat had slipped beside it.
“If I could only get that cap and coat,” thought the young prisoner. The door to the next room was unlocked,—indeed, it had never had a lock on it,—and it was an easy matter to step up to the guard. In a moment more Henry had the articles he desired. Then he turned back, for he knew that another guard was in the street, near the door leading to the thoroughfare.
“Hullo! How cold it is!” Henry heard the guard mutter. He waited to hear no more, but as the man stretched himself he ran to the window, smashed out what remained of the glass, pushed aside the loosened bars, and leaped out into the snow of the yard.
There was now an alarm, and the youth knew that in another moment three or four guards would be after him, each with a musket, ready to shoot him on sight. He leaped for the shelter of a nearby woodshed, donned the cap and military overcoat, and then continued to the back of the yard, where he hopped over a fence, and darted into an alleyway leading to another street.
As Henry gained the alleyway the report of a musket rang out on the early night air, and soon the commotion in and around the prison increased.
“What’s the rumpus?” demanded the officer of the guard, running up.
“Morris has escaped!”
“He attacked me like a savage beast,” said the guard, who had been dozing. “He—he complained of being half frozen, and then he turned on me like a fury.”
“You’re a set of numskulls!” roared the officer of the guard, in great wrath. “After him, and if you do not bring him back, dead or alive, somebody shall pay dearly for this blundering.”
One thing prison life had given Henry. That was plenty of rest, and now as he ran through the alleyway and out on the next street he felt as if he could cover ten or twenty miles without stopping.
“They shan’t catch me,” he told himself. “I’ll show them what an American can do when he is put to it.”
On account of the darkness and the cold the street was almost deserted, and the few people he met hardly noticed him; doubtless thinking he was merely some soldier hurrying to his quarters after a chilling tour of guard duty on the ramparts.
During the time Henry had been free to come and go in Quebec he had visited nearly every part of the city, which in those days was far from large. Consequently, he knew where he was and how to turn to get to where he wanted to go.
“I’ll have to leave the city to-night, that is certain,” he told himself. “In the morning there will be a warning sent out, and to pass any of the guards will be impossible.”
But how to get out was a serious problem until he caught sight of a covered wagon drawn by a team of horses, moving slowly toward the gate of St. John. This wagon contained supplies for the hospital, located to the northward, on a bend of the St. Charles River. The supplies were needed at once, hence they were being sent out at night instead of waiting until morning.
Climbing upon the wagon from behind, Henry secreted himself between several boxes and bundles. Neither the driver of the wagon nor his assistant noticed the movement, and in a moment more the wagon was at the gate.
“What wagon is that?” Henry heard a guard call out.
“General Hospital Wagon No. 4,” was the answer from the driver. And he showed a slip of paper.
“Right; pass on,” answered the guard, and the gate was opened, the wagon passed through, and then the gate was closed again.
Hardly daring to breathe, the young soldier remained crouched between boxes and bundles, as the wagon jounced over the rough road, deep with snow in some places, and swept bare by the wind in others. Then, when he calculated that half the distance to the hospital had been covered, and they came to another road leading westward, he dropped off behind, and the hospital wagon rolled out of sight without him.