“It all turned out well.  It was a pitch dark night, raining and blowing, and the sentries kept inside their boxes.  I got up to the top of the wall all right, and was able to fasten the rope on to the spikes and slide down on the other side.  The woman was there with a man, whom she told me was her brother.  They took me to a creek two miles away and there put me on board a boat, and I was rowed out to a smuggling craft which at once set sail, and two days later was landed at Cherbourg.  So that’s how I came to learn English.”

“Did you ever hear whether the woman who helped you was suspected?”

“I saw her brother two months afterward on one of the trips that the craft he belonged to made.  He said that of course there were a great many inquiries made, and his sister had been questioned closely.  She swore that she had hardly spoken to me for the last two months and that she had given me nothing; which in a way was true enough, for she had not handed them to me herself.  The prisoners bore her out about her not coming near me, for it had been noticed that she was not as friendly as she had been.  Some had thought her ungrateful, while others had fancied that she was angry at my interfering and making a tumult about the child.  Anyhow, whatever suspicions they might have had they could prove nothing.  They forbade her entering the prison in future; but she didn’t mind that so long as her husband, who had been employed a good many years there, did not lose his situation.  He had been kept by her in entire ignorance of the whole affair, and was very indignant at her having been suspected.  I sent her a letter of thanks by her brother, and a little present for her and one for the child.  The brother was to give them to her as if from himself, so that the husband should not smell a rat, but of course to make her understand who they came from.”

“Well, I only hope, Jacques,” Ralph said, “that when I get shut up in one of your prisons I shall find some French woman to aid me to escape, just as you found an English woman to help you; only I hope it won’t be four years coming about.”

“I think we look sharper after our prisoners than you do; still it may be.  But it will be some time before you are in prison; and if you play your cards well and learn to speak our language, and make yourself useful, I do not think the captain is likely to hand you over to the authorities when we get back to a French port again.”

“I am quite ready to do my best to learn the language and to make myself useful,” Ralph said.  “It is always a good thing to know French, especially as I am going into the army some day; that is if I get back again in time.”

“Oh, I think you will do so,” the man said.  “You keep up your spirits well, and that is the great thing.  There are many boys that would sit down and cry if they found themselves in such a scrape as you have got into.”

“Cry!” Ralph repeated indignantly.  “You don’t suppose a boy of my age is going to cry like a girl!  An English boy would be ashamed to cry, especially when Frenchmen were looking on.”