ek."

"Bravo!" cried Rodwood. "Trust a bold 'free trader' for finding a way
out of a tight corner. There's our plan of campaign all ready made."

"Look here," broke in the man who had been standing guard over myself
and George Woodley. "What's to be done with this pair, I'd like to
know? You don't mean to leave 'em sitting here, I suppose?"

"I'd forgotten about the guard and that boy," exclaimed Rodwood. "Take
them across the field, and tie them each to a tree in the copse yonder;
but gag them first."

Fortunately for us, this suggestion on the part of their leader did not
meet with the approval of the other convicts.

"Don't be hard on the lad," said one. "If he hadn't pulled up the
horses, we should most of us have had our necks broken."

"Woodley's a good fellow too," remarked another: "he gave us all the
baccy he had on him. Tied to a tree, that youngster will be dead of
cold before morning; as for the 'screws,' why, they must take their
chance."

"Well, these must take their chance too," returned Rodwood angrily.
"If they come to be mixed up in this business, that's their own
lookout, and not our fault."

"The boy will be frozen on a night like this," said a voice. "He did
us a good turn, so why not take him with us? We shall find a chance of
dropping him, and the guard too, later on."

"Take him with us!" retorted the leader. "We shall have enough trouble
to get off as it is, without dragging a couple of informers round the
country with us."

A heated discussion followed. Strange and out of place as it seemed in
the breasts of such rascals, a sense of gratitude for what I had done,
and for sundry little tokens of commiseration on the part of the
kind-hearted George, mingled with their delight at finding themselves
so far on the road to freedom, prompted them to show some return in
preserving us from injury. It was freezing hard, and the cold was
likely to increase still more before morning; therefore it was more
than likely that a boy like myself, already tired out with the journey
and the long day's adventures, if tied to a tree without the chance of
moving about to keep up the circulation, would ultimately perish from
the effects of the exposure, if he did not actually die before he was
discovered. For the warders there was certainly more hope: the walls
of the cottage afforded them a certain amount of shelter from the
cutting wind, and, as I afterwards discovered, they had been flung d