But Don’s resolutions amounted to nothing, and neither did the efforts
he made to free himself from his bonds. Godfrey had done his work
well, and Don could move neither hand nor foot. He tried to pull the
stanchion down, but it was as solid as it was the first day it was put
up there, and Don could not even shake it. He was fast, and there he
must stay until some one came to release him. His feelings, as he began
to realize this fact, were none of the pleasantest, but still they
were much more agreeable than his cousin’s were the next morning, when
he first learned from Godfrey Evans who it was that he had assisted
to capture and imprison the night before; and to him we will now turn
before we tell how Don got out, and what happened to him afterward.
We left Clarence leaning against the corn-crib, almost overwhelmed with
the startling disclosures his companion in trouble had just made to him.
“I can see through some of it now jest as easy as fallin’ off a log,”
moaned Godfrey, rocking himself back and forth as he sat on the ground,
“an’ I blame myself fur not seein’ through it sooner. That thar Don is
a great feller fur tricks, an’ here he’s gone an’ dressed hisself up
like ole Jordan so’s to fool me an’ the rest.”
“If that is the case,” said Clarence, who at last succeeded in finding
his tongue, “he must have known about the barrel; and how did he find
that out?”
“I didn’t say I could see through it all, did I?” demanded Godfrey.
“That’s the part I can’t understand, no more’n I can understand how you
fust come to know about the bar’l.”
“How do you know it was Don?” asked Clarence, who could not realize the
situation in which he was placed. “You haven’t been near the cellar
this morning, have you?”
“No, I hain’t; but I know it’s Mr. Don all the same,” replied Godfrey.
“Did ye never hear him whistle? Wal, I have. He can whistle so’t ye can
hear him a mile; an’ the fust thing I heerd this mornin’, when I opened
my eyes, was him a whistlin’ like he was a callin’ his dogs. I went to
the door an’ listened, kase somethin’ kinder told me that mebbe things
wasn’t jest right like they’d oughter be, an’ if them whistles didn’t
come from that tater-hole, I ain’t a settin’ here.”
“Couldn’t old Jordan whistle?” asked Clarence, who still clung to the
hope that Godfrey was mistaken.
“Not like that, an’ nuther could anybody else. I tell you he’s thar,
Mr. Clarence, an’ now what’s goin’ to become of me an’ you?”
“De pony ready, sar,” said the hostler, showing himself at the end of
the crib at this moment.
“Whar ye goin’?” asked Godfrey, as Clarence moved away. “Don’t leave me
now. I’m in a power of trouble an’ trib’lation!”
“Am I any better off, I’d like to know?” demanded the boy angrily. “You
think of no one but yourself. Here am I, fifteen hundred miles from
home, and with scarcely twenty dollars that I can call my own.”
“That’s more’n I’ve got,” whined Godfrey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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