ed up here and found Miss Alice under the tree."

"I'm glad to hear that, Jo; it's what has been on my own mind all the
morning. But Dick Price, he is not convinced that he deserves to escape.
Now you tell him all _you_ know about Gascoyne, and I'll tell him all
_I_ know; and if he don't believe us, Alice and Poopy will tell him all
_they_ know; and if that won't do, you and I will take him up by the
legs and pitch him into the sea!"

"That bein' how the case stands, fire away," said Dick Price, with a
grin, sitting down on the grass and busily filling his pipe.

Dick was not so hard to be convinced as Corrie had feared. The glowing
eulogiums of Bumpus, and the earnest pleadings of Alice, won him over
very soon. He finally agreed to become one of the conspirators.

"But how is the thing to be done?" asked Corrie, in some perplexity.

"Ah! that's the p'int," observed Dick, looking profoundly wise.

"Nothing easier," said Bumpus, whose pipe was by this time keeping pace
with that of his new friend. "The case is as clear as mud. Here's how it
is. Gascoyne is in limbo; well, we are out of limbo. Good. Then, all
we've got for to do is to break into limbo and shove Gascoyne out of
limbo, and help him to escape. It's all square, you see, lads."

"Not so square as you seem to think," said Henry Stuart, who at that
moment stepped from behind the stem of the tree, which had prevented
the party from observing his approach.

"Why not?" said Bumpus, making room for the young man to sit beside
Alice on the grass.

"Because," said Henry, "Gascoyne won't agree to escape."

"Not agree for to escape!"

"No. If the prison doors were opened at this moment, he would not walk
out."

Bumpus became very grave, and shook his head. "Are ye sartin sure o'
this?" said he.

"Quite sure," replied Henry, who now detailed part of his recent
conversation with the pirate captain.

"Then it's all up with him!" said Bumpus; "and the pirate will meet his
doom, as I once heard a feller say in a play--though I little thought to
see it acted in reality."

"So he will," added Dick Price.

Corrie's countenance fell, and Alice grew pale, Even Poopy and Toozle
looked a little depressed.

"No; it is _not_ all up with him," cried Henry Stuart, energetically. "I
have a plan in my head which I think will succeed, but I must have
assistance. It won't do, however, to discuss this before our young
friends. I must beg of Alice and Poopy to leave us.