the room for an explanation.

The bed was without tenant. Had Captain Murray, or some other officer,
come with a guard while he slept and taken the prisoner away?

Then the truth came like a flash:--

The window in the next room--it was open!

He darted back and ran to the window to thrust out his head and look
down. Yes, it was easy enough; he could himself have got out, hung by
his hands, and dropped upon the pavement, which would not have been
above eight feet from the soles of his boots as he hung.

But the wound! How could a lad who was badly wounded in the arm manage
to perform such a feat?

He must have been half wild, delirious from fever, to have done such a
thing. No.

Fresh thoughts came fast now. It stood to reason that if Drew had been
half wild with delirium he must have been roused; and he now recalled
how coolly the doctor had taken the injury, and Captain Murray's
half-contemptuous manner, which he had thought unfeeling. Then, too, it
was strange that Drew should have lain as he did, with his eyes tightly
closed, just as if he were perfectly insensible, and never making the
slightest sign when he had spoken to him.

For a few minutes Frank battled with the notion; but it grew stronger
and stronger, and at last he was convinced.

"Then he was shamming," he muttered indignantly, "pretending to be worse
than he really was, so as to throw people off their guard, and then try
again to escape."

Once more he tried to prove himself to be in the wrong and thoroughly
unjust to the wounded lad; but facts are stubborn things, and one after
the other they rose up, trifles in themselves, but gaining strength as
the array increased, and at last a bitter feeling of anger filled the
boy's breast, as he felt perfectly convinced of the truth that Drew had
lain there waiting till he was asleep, and then, in spite of his wound,
had crept out of the window, dropped, and gone.

But how could he? The sentries had stopped him before; why did they not
do so at the second attempt?

And besides, there was the sentry just outside the door. Why had not he
heard?

Frank went to the window again, and looked out, to find that it was not
deemed necessary to place a guard over the guardroom and the officers'
quarters, save that there was one man at the main doorway, and this was
beyond an angle from where he stood, while the next sentries were in the
courtyard to his left, and the stable-yard, to his right. So