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Updated: June 1, 2025
To the tragedy of Verdun, these men were the chorus; there was something Sophoclean in this group of older men alone in the silence and ruin of the beleaguered city. A stove filled with wood from the wrecked houses gave out a comfortable heat, and in an alley-way, under cover, stood a two-wheeled hose cart, and an old-fashioned seesaw fire pump.
"He has gone into the rear house, at the end of the alleyway," decided Benson, peering down this narrow thoroughfare. "He has left the door partly open, too. I'll have to have a look-in." As he stole down the alley-way Jack Benson was too sensible, and by this time, too much experienced in the ways of a rougher world, not to suspect that there might be some trap in that door partly open.
But "looking round" took time; and, before the circuit of Thorny's mouth was satisfactorily made, Betty had become absorbed by a more interesting tale than even the immortal "Bluebeard." A noise of children's voices in the narrow alley-way behind the house attracted her attention; the long window opened directly on the yard, and the gate swung in the wind.
News of the mishap had outstripped the gondola. Two turns of an alley-way, a couple of bridges, a dash across a square, and another alley-way, had brought a messenger to the house, while the gondola was still gliding on its tortuous way. A group of women awaited their arrival.
All ran without a moment's hesitation, and secreting themselves in the drift awaited results. Presently they heard footsteps in the alley-way, and the voice of their big brother called out. "Where are all you, little people, and what do do you hide from me for?" The Indian they had heard was Sam creeping around to see who it was that was burning the drift.
Through a hole in the fence he saw an alley-way; and by the aid of an old barrel that stood in the yard, he climbed to the top of the fence and let himself down on the other side, falling a few feet. A sharp pain was felt in one of his ankles as his feet touched the ground. He had sprained it in his leap from the window, and now felt the first pangs attendant on the injury.
Five members of Dick & Co., angry all the way through, were the first to reach that corner. "There he goes, down the alley-way to the livery stable!" roared Dave Darrin. "After him, fellows!" But by the time that the five reached the stable yard the fugitive was out of sight. Men hurried up, and a quick search was made of the neighborhood.
This alone was sufficient to identify her beyond question as the convict-ship of which they were in search; but if further evidence had been needed it was to be found in the "pen" a stout, substantially built wooden structure of closely set palings, about ten feet high, that occupied nearly the whole of the fore-deck, except a narrow alley-way on each side of it to allow of the passage of the crew fore and aft, and which included the great main hatchway, the covers of which had been replaced by a stout grating, with a small aperture in it just large enough for a man to squeeze through, and at which a soldier with a loaded rifle stood guard.
"Eight and fivepence," she added, laughing at him and running below to unlock her trunk and bring him the money without a glimmer of apprehension. She put the five pounds into his hand in the alley-way. A minute later he was back with an enormous bunch of grapes lying amongst their green leaves. "Lock your door when you come on deck, and shut your porthole," he told her.
At the other end of the sloping roof, where it met an alley-way that opened upon a street beyond, there was a little child leaning over to look at some soldiers that were passing through the street across the alley. He was supporting himself, by an iron wire that served as a lightning-rod.
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