Jim enjoyed his breakfast, exceedingly. It was the first he had eaten, for a long time, without any rules against talking. It seemed as if everybody in the room talked all the while. After it was over, he and Rodney went to the door and looked out.
The wide, bare space, in which the Nelson garden was beginning to grow, was not much like the House of Refuge parade-ground, although it seemed to have pretty high, stone walls on three of its sides and a row of buildings on the other. These were different buildings and nearly in the middle of the row was the Kirby place, instead of the Randall’s Island printing office. It looked very much as if all this had been getting ready to take Jim in, whenever he should get away from the Island. He had a strong, oppressive feeling, however, that he had not yet entirely escaped.
“They’ll think it was awful wrong for me to get away,” he thought. “It’s just as if it was as bad as stealing to have ever been sent there. How shall I get rid of it?”
He had all the while, month after month, been suffering under a sense of terrible injustice, and now it stung him again, for it was following him, and so, he knew, were men who deemed it their duty to catch him and take him back.
Rodney, too, was thinking of that.
“Jim,” he said, “Kirby’s printing office is better than working in our garden. They might see you, from the sidewalk, and ask where you came from.”
“I guess I could tell ’em, with these clothes on,” laughed Jim, for his spirits were improving and it seemed to him as if Randall’s Island were drifting away.
At that very moment, in the Bronson farmhouse, away up the Hudson, they were talking about Jim.
A man had come in, just at breakfast time, and had said something which made everybody jump.
“What’s that, Squire? Did you say it was a telegraphic despatch from Randall’s Island that Jim’s got out?”
“Thank God if he had!” exclaimed Aunt Betty, and it looked as if she would have clapped her hands, or danced, if she had not been so anxious to hear.
“Jim and four more of ’em,” said the Squire. “It doesn’t tell how they did it, but they might come right here, or he might, and you’d ought to know.”
“I’d like to know all about it,” said Uncle John Bronson, slowly. “If you hear anything more, let me know. Jim may not come this way.”
“Perhaps not,” said the Squire, “but I just want to say one thing. We’re old neighbors, and Jim’s a right likely young fellow. I can’t guess how he beat ’em, but if he should get up this way, and you or his aunt knew where he was, you needn’t say too much to me. You see, it would be my duty to catch him, and I’d have to do my duty——”
“O, no! Never!” broke in Aunt Betty. “I wouldn’t say a word! I wouldn’t be so mean as to put that on you. John wouldn’t either.”
“Why, Squire,” said Uncle John, “I don’t know a word about it——”
“No more do I,” said the Squire, turning to go out. “Good morning.—But he’s a plucky young fellow, now, I tell you. How they did it, I don’t see.—I’d have to take him. Of course I would. I’d do my duty.—But I don’t really believe they need Jim Harris, much, on Randall’s Island.”
So different people, in places widely apart, were aware of Jim’s escape and were taking their own peculiar view of the matter. Quite a number were wishing they knew how he did it but they had not yet found out.
A sea tide ebbs with as much force and swiftness as it flowed in with, and it will carry loads both ways. This was the reason why when the House of Refuge lifeboat was found, some hours after it was shoved off by Jim and his crew, it was found knocking against the side of a pier away down, near the middle of the city. Therefore it gave no hint as to where it had landed the runaways. Only an hour or so later, however, the police knew a little more, for they managed to capture poor Joe. He had been altogether too confident and had walked out into the street too soon, without changing his grey uniform for every day clothes. He was a little chopfallen, at first, but he really could not tell much about the other boys. He was at once ferried over to the Island and brought face to face with his old friends, the officers.
“What did you run away for, Joe?” asked the pleasant faced Superintendent.
“I—I don’t know, sir,” replied Joe.
“Didn’t we treat you well?” asked the Military Instructor, for Joe had been a lieutenant in one of the companies.
“Of course you did,” said Joe. “But, tell you what, I’d as lief come back, but then, any fellow’d get away, if he had Jim to show him how.”
“Big adventure!” exclaimed another officer.
That was indeed a part of it, and there was no reason, now, why Joe should conceal anything. He went with them to the dormitory and explained about the locks. Then they walked out into the parade-ground, where the empty boxes still lay at the machine shop wall.
“We went over the roof,” said Joe, and every man who heard him tell how they did it agreed with the Superintendent.
“Jim is a genius!” he exclaimed. “Not one boy in a thousand could have planned and carried out that escape.”
“He’s a captain!” added the skipper of the steam tug. “But we’d have caught ’em, if it hadn’t been for that fog.”
“We shall get them all, before long,” said Jim’s friend, the naval officer. “All but Jim. I’m afraid we’ve lost him. I’m sorry. I did want to do something more for that boy.”
The very kindly man in charge of the House of Refuge printing office also remarked that it was a pity Jim should run away, just when he was learning his trade so fast and so well. He could hardly have guessed that Jim was already at a case in another shop, setting type as busily as usual.
Mr. Kirby himself, a grey-haired, silent man, with a queer kind of smile on his face, was working at the press in another room, but Jim was not the only type-setter. At the next case stood Millie, and between them and the door were other ranges of cases, and two of these were journeymen printers. All were seemingly absorbed in their type-sticking when a man in a blue uniform opened the street door and strolled in.
“Where’s Kirby?” he asked.
“In the press room,” said Millie, but her hand slipped, as she spoke, and all the type in her half filled “stick” went rattling down on the floor.
“That’s all pi,” laughed the policeman as he strode on to the press room door.
“Kirby,” he said, “did you hear about the escape of those young fellows, last night, from the House of Refuge?”
“Got out, did they?” asked Mr. Kirby. “I guess it isn’t in the papers.”
“Too soon,” said the officer. “I don’t believe they want it printed, either. It’s no fault of theirs, but they want to catch the boys. Smartest escape——” and then he went on with an account of it which contained as many blunders as Jim was just then making in his type-setting. At the end of it, however, the officer said:
“You see, two of ’em are printers, and one’s a pretty good one. They’re likely to look for work in their own trade, soon as they can get off their prison rig. If they should come to you, now——”
“A boy’d be just hidden away in one of the big printing houses, down town,” said Mr. Kirby. “You couldn’t find him.”
“Yes, we could,” said the officer. “Every man and boy in each one of them is already registered by the place itself and by the trades unions. We could find out just where he came from.”
“Then why don’t you register my office?” asked Mr. Kirby. “You can take down the name of every fellow here, this morning, so that if any new fellow should come you could mark him. Register me.”
“I don’t need to,” said the officer. “Nor your daughter, nor the hands. I’ll remember all of ’em, well enough. If I see a new boy here, any time, I can ask about him.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Kirby, but Millie was picking up her scattered type and the jour’ printers exchanged winks as the policeman walked out.
Those very printers, that morning, had threatened to leave the shop if Mr. Kirby took in a new boy who was not a member of their Printers’ Union.
“Just you listen to me, boys,” Mr. Kirby had said. “There isn’t one of you mean enough——” and he told them the whole story.
He was right. Not one of them was mean enough to give up Jim. Their very hearts went out to a fellow who had been shut up unjustly and who had made so daring an escape. It was not at all, they said, as if he had really deserved to be shut up.