One by one, and as quiet as mice, we crawled through the window, and dropped to the earth below.

CHAPTER VII

BUT WE DECIDE TO GO

Mr. Daddles stood on a ledge of the building a moment, and quietly pulled down the window.

“It wasn’t locked,” he muttered, “so there’ll be nothing to show how we got out.”

We were in a little yard at the rear of the jail.  There was a large empty building,—­a barn, or a boat-builder’s work-shop, on the next lot.  It cast a deep shadow over one side of the yard, and we kept in this shadow, as we stole toward the fence.  A short alley ran down the hill on the other side of this fence.  In a moment or two we were tip-toeing through the alley.  It seemed to me that I had been going on tip-toe for hours,—­I wondered if I would forget how to walk in the usual way.

Everything was quiet; we met no one, and heard nothing.  Turning up the street we kept on, silently, until we reached the open space near the water.  There was the tent, white and still in the moonlight.  We looked in at the flap of the tent,—­two dim forms lay wrapped in blankets, breathing heavily, and both sound asleep.

“Look at ’em!” said the banjo-man, in a low tone, “sleeping like babes, while I was languishing in jail.”

“Wake up!” he said, in a slightly louder voice, prodding the nearest one with his banjo.

“Ub-ber-ubber-er-bubber-yah!” remarked the man, sitting bolt upright, and looking about him, as if he had been attacked by wild animals.

“That’s all right,” said Sprague, “it’s only me.  Don’t get excited.  Keep quiet,—­don’t bubber any more.  We’re hunted criminals, with a price upon our heads.  Prices, I should say.”

The other man stirred slightly, and rolled over.

“Hullo!  That you?  Rescued from a county jail?”

“Rescued nothing!” replied Sprague, “I might have died in jail of old age before you would have done anything.  Got out by our own valor and ingenuity.  Tunneled through fifteen feet of living rock.  Now, get up, and be quiet about it,—­the hounds of the law are on our trail, and we must leave these shores quick.”

The second man arose swiftly, and began folding his blankets.  The other one, however,—­the one who had wakened uttering gibberish—­ crossed his hands over his knees, and said:  “I don’t know about this!”

“No,” said Sprague, “of course you don’t.  We’ll discuss it on the boat,—­you shall argue it out to your heart’s content.  Come out of the tent, now’.  We’re going to get under way, and quit this place just as soon as we can,—­and that’s in about two shakes.”

The second man had come out of the tent, bringing his blankets with him.  Mr. Daddles and all the rest of us set to work pulling up the tent stakes.  But the other man sat there, shaking his head.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” said he; “of course that constable was very arbitrary in his manner, but he is the constable, just the same.  I inquired and found that he is.  The arrest was perfectly legal.  You had much better stay in jail until morning, and submit to a fine which would probably be merely nominal.  As it is, you are becoming a fugitive from justice—­”