“Val,” he said, under his breath, “you’ll have to excuse yourself to Dorothea. You’ll let him go, won’t you?” he went on directly to the girl. “Fielding, who was out last night after that escaped officer, is back again and wants to see us. I told him we’d talk to him in my bed chamber, upstairs. It was the only private spot I could think of. Take Dorothea to mother, and join us as quickly as you can.” Hal went away hurriedly and Tracy started across the room toward where Mrs. May was sitting with some of the elder ladies. Dorothea walked beside him mechanically. The man upstairs was lost. They would come upon him, sleeping in Hal’s room, and the poor fellow would have to go back to the prison horrors from which he had tried, so desperately, to escape. And there was nothing she could do. Already, she supposed, Hal and the man Fielding were upstairs. She shrank from contact with these chattering people. She wanted to be alone, to think of some way of escape for the poor man if she could. “I don’t wish to go to Aunt ’Thenia for a moment,” she whispered, when they were half way across the room. “I would rather go out on the gallery for a breath of air.” He looked at her sharply, and noted that her face had suddenly grown pale. “Aren’t you feeling well?” he asked with a touch of anxiety in his voice. For an instant it occurred to her that by saying “yes” she could keep him at her side. Then she realized the uselessness of this. Tracy was only one. No doubt Hal had summoned other officers to the conference and probably the man was already taken. “It’s the heat I’m unused to; I shall be all right in a moment,” she answered, and with that he left her and she took her way unnoticed out on to the broad porch. CHAPTER XIII A FRIEND IN NEED Dorothea had no definite plan in her mind when she went out on the long dark gallery. Her only desire was to be alone for a while to try to think of some way to aid the poor prisoner upstairs. But it required no reflection to show her that she was quite powerless. The case, as she saw it, was hopeless. The man was, in all probability a prisoner already and would be justified in thinking that she herself had taken a hand in his recapture. She could see only one possibility of his escaping. If he was wakened in time he might be able to get out on the roof again and continue in hiding. She halted suddenly, an impulse coming to her to run upstairs and try to warn him, but she shook her head. Common sense told her it was too late to do anything. She turned a corner of the house and looked out upon the lawn. There, dim shadows in the darkness, she could see the forms of several horses, and walking slowly up and down, with his gaze fixed upon the piazza roof, was a soldierly figure, intently watching. She stopped, half hidden by the turn in the house, and waited. In a moment or two she heard a window raised in one of the rooms above.