Early hours were the rule of the dormitory, but general conversation could not begin at once on getting up. Jim did not feel like speaking to anybody. His first strong impression was that any officer who looked him in the face might see there that something was going on. His next, as he met his confederates, one by one, was that he could see by their faces that they were trying to keep a secret.
After that, he was little surprised to find himself making the same remark concerning some of the smaller boys. He thought no more about that, for they were very apt to get into scrapes, but they did indeed have something on their minds, every inch as heavy, for them, as was the load he carried himself.
He had already learned over again one thing that he had known before. This was that all his hopes and plans must wait awhile. He would have to go along and let things turn up, one after another. Nobody can ever tell what is coming next or how their plans will unexpectedly run into those of other people.
Mrs. Nelson and Rodney, for instance, could hardly say that they had any plans, beyond hoping to sell one of their town lots for enough to pay the taxes and assessments on the rest; and having a door put in; and having a garden. She could not afford to keep Rodney any longer at school. He was old enough to earn something, and, besides, what if she should get sick or be out of work?
“I’ve got to do something,” he said, as he was carrying a chair upstairs. “Millie Kirby can set type. I wish I could. But she learned how in her father’s shop.”
She was a stirring kind of girl, anyhow, and he was a little afraid of her, but when he came downstairs again, she was in the back doorway, calling out:
“Rodney! Rodney!—You must come over to our house, right away! Billy’s down in our cellar and we can’t get him out. He’s drank up all the milk and he’s eaten all the vegetables. He tried to butt me and mother, too.”
“How did he get there!” exclaimed Rodney, setting out at once. “The old rascal!”
“The cellar was shut up, all night,” she said, “and the things were put into it to keep them safe, and when we went down, this morning, there was Billy, ready to fight us.”
“He’s the worst old goat!” said Rodney, “and he doesn’t belong to me, anyhow.”
He went in a hurry, however, and in a few minutes he began to understand the matter. The cellar stairs went down from a door opening into the hall.
“That was open when you and I went through, yesterday,” said Rodney to Millie. “He just followed us. Why, it’s through this hall he gets out into the street, sometimes. He watches till the door’s open. I guess he got into my room through that front window.”
That was not all, if Rodney had but known the working of the mind of a goat. Having once gone downstairs successfully, in his own house, the next time he saw stairs before him, they seemed to promise to let him out into liberty, and so he was now down in the Kirby cellar, a very much bewildered goat. His plans had all gone wrong and he was glad to have his own best friend take him by the horns and lead him upstairs again.
“There he goes!” shouted Millie, but Rodney was just then listening ruefully to Mrs. Kirby’s energetic account of all the robbery and other mischief Billy had accomplished in her cellar.
He was glad enough to get away homeward and carry an account of Billy’s transactions to Pat the carpenter, up on the new avenue.
“The baste!” exclaimed Patrick. “But thim will climb anywhere.—Luk at that? It’s a big hole for wan dure but it’s the good job I’m makin.”
“I can paint it,” said Rod. “I guess I can paint all the side of the house. ’Twon’t take much, all that’s above the street.—Then if I could get the garden ploughed——”
“Why not?” exclaimed Pat. “Sure, I know a man wid a small horse and a plough of his own. If Billy can come through Kirby’s hall, why can’t a pony? I’ll see to that same.”
It was a ray of hope for Rod, although he doubted if Mrs. Kirby would let a horse of any kind go through her house. He said he would see her about it, but what he really meant was that he would speak to Millie.
That was a long day to quite a number of people. Nowhere, however, was there more of it than among some of the boys who spent part of its afternoon in a long, hard drill on the House of Refuge parade-ground.
Most of them marched pretty well, but there were several middle-sized boys, in the third company from the front, who had to be spoken to, several times, for the way they missed step.
Jim was not near enough to them, when the line halted before the wall and faced about, to notice how they craned their heads around and stared at it. What could they have been thinking about, in or on that gray, stony face?
Jim himself had thought of it and had studied it, and it seemed to him to be all the while coming between him and the island wharf. Still, he paid particular attention to his orders and his marching, just as he had, in the earlier part of the day, to his type-setting tasks.
The close of the day came, at last, in a dim, foggy kind of dusk that promised darkness much earlier than usual. The parade-ground, and all the rest of the wide enclosure, outside of the buildings, seemed to be deserted. Inside of the buildings, however, there suddenly arose a kind of buzz, that quickly amounted to something like an excitement. A rumor whispered its way around among the boys that three of their number were missing and could not be found.
They did not know that the first difficulty which troubled their officers, just then, was that there was not a sufficient number of themselves for indoor duty and, at the same time, to spare searchers for stray boys over so large a space and in so many places. Nearly a score of the older and more trustworthy boys were therefore picked out as helpers, and they were quickly scurrying hither and thither, in all directions. Jim felt especially gratified that the Assistant Superintendent, a handsome young naval officer whom he could not help liking, chose him for one of the hunters. He knew that neither of the fellows were missing whom he intended as the crew of his boat, and he went out into the dim, gloomy parade-ground with a perfect fever of curiosity to discover what any other fellows were up to.
“They can’t get away,” he said to his blue uniformed friend, “but what can they be trying to do?”
“We’ll see,” said the officer, “but we can’t find a trace of them.”
It was indeed a pretty long time before they did so. Every nook and cranny of the shops and other buildings and of all the walled-in ground had been gone over and it was, fast getting into the shape of a mystery.
Jim was carrying a lantern, but the officer held in his hand a different kind of light, a reflector, a “bull’s-eye,” that would throw a stream of light ahead like a small locomotive headlight. He was busily throwing it in all directions and just now, as if by mere accident, he sent it up to the roof of the large building next to the engine building. It was not so very high, but was much higher than the latter and it had several chimneys, coming out just above its eaves.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Jim.
“There they are!” said the officer, almost laughing; and then he shouted, commandingly:
“Come down, boys! We’ll put up a ladder.”
They had not gone up there by a ladder, but, with wonderful pluck and agility, by way of the water-pipe at one end of the building. They had then intended to have remained hidden, each behind a chimney, until all should be quiet within the enclosure.
After that they would have had to come down into the parade-ground again and hunt for some means of scaling the wall. As for anything beyond that, when they came down and were questioned, it seemed that all their small plot went no further. They did not know what they meant to do after getting over the wall.
“They might have known they’d be missed, right away,” thought Jim. “Glad they didn’t fall and break their necks. Best thing for ’em that they got caught. But I’ve learned one thing. That high building has water pipes on this side but the engine building hasn’t any. It’s a low building, too. I wish there was some way for getting on the roof of it and down the other side, but there isn’t any.”
So there his own plan broke down again, just as had the thoughtless undertaking of smaller boys. Nevertheless, an hour or so after they were all safely locked up in the dormitory, he was out of his own cell and in four others, one after another, telling his friends he believed he had discovered a pathway which might lead them all to the wharf on the bank of the river.