"Here," said the boy. "Read it."
And so saying, he shoved a note into the other"s hand. Mark took it hurriedly, tore it open and read it.
It took him but a moment to do so, and when he finished his face was a picture of amazement and incredulity.
"Who gave you this?" he demanded, angrily.
"Ssh!" whispered the boy, glancing fearfully at the bed where Texas lay.
"Ssh! You may wake him. She did."
"Now, look here!" said Mark, in a recklessly loud voice, for he was angry, believing that the boy was lying. "Now, look here! I"ve been fooled with one letter this way, and I don"t mean to be fooled again. If this is a trap of those cadets, as sure as I"m alive, I"ll report the matter to the superintendent and have you court-martialed. Remember! And now I give you a chance to take it back. If you tell me the truth I"ll let you go unhurt. Now, once more, who gave you this?"
And Mark looked the trembling boy in the eye; but the boy still clung to his story.
"She did, indeed she did," he protested.
"Where?" asked Mark.
"Down at her house."
"Why were you there?"
"I live there."
Mark stared at the boy for a moment more, and bit his lip in uncertainty. Then he turned away and fell to pacing up and down the room, muttering to himself.
"Yes," he said, "yes, I believe she wrote it. But what on earth can it mean? What on earth can be the matter?"
Then he turned to the boy.
"Do you know what she wants?" he inquired.
"No, sir," whispered the other. "Only she told me to show you the way to her house."
"Is anything the matter?"
"I don"t know; but she looked very pale."
And Mark turned away once more and fell to pacing back and forth.
"Shall I go?" he mused. "Shall I go? It"s beyond cadet limits. If I"m caught it means court-martial and expulsion. There"s the "blue book" on the mantel staring at me for a warning. By jingo! I don"t think I"ll risk it!"
He turned to the boy about to refuse the request; and then suddenly came another thought--she knew the danger as well as he! She knew what it meant to go beyond limits, and yet she had sent for him at this strange hour of the night, and for him, too, a comparative stranger. Surely, it must be a desperate matter, a matter in which to fail was sheer cowardice. At the same time with the thought there rose up before him a vision of a certain very sweet and winsome face; and when he spoke to the boy his answer was:
"I"ll go."
He stepped to the desk, and wrote hastily on a piece of paper this note to Texas:
"I"ll be back in time to fight. Explain later. Trust me.
"MARK."
This he laid on the bureau, and then silently but quickly put on his clothes and stepped to the door with the boy. Mark halted for a moment and glanced about the room to make sure that all was well and that Texas was asleep, and then he softly shut the door and turned to the boy.
"How are we going to get out?" he demanded.
"Come," responded the other, setting the example by creeping along on tiptoe. "Come."
They halted again at the top of the stairway to wait until the sentry had gone down, and then stole down and dodged outside the door just as the latter turned and marched back. Flattened against the wall, they waited breathlessly, while he approached nearer and nearer, and then he halted, wheeled and went on. At the same moment the two crept quickly across the area and vanished in the darkness of the sally port.
"Now," said the drum boy, as they came out on the other side, "here we are. Come on."
Mark turned and followed him swiftly down the road toward Highland Falls, and quiet once more reigned about the post.
There was one thing more that needs to be mentioned. It was a very simple incident, but it was destined to lead to a great deal. It was merely that a gust of wind blew in at the window of the room where Texas slept, and, seizing the sheet of paper upon which Mark had written, lifted it gently up and dropped it softly and silently behind the bureau, whither Mark had thrown the other note.
And that was all.
CHAPTER III.
TROUBLE FOR MARK.
Time has a way of pa.s.sing very hurriedly when there is anything going to happen, especially if it be something disagreeable. The hands of the clock had been at half-past eleven when Mark left. It took them almost no time to hurry on to midnight, and not much longer to get to two. And from two it went on to three, and then to half-past. The blackness of the night began to wane, and the sky outside the window to lighten with the first gray streaks of dawn. Not long after this time up in one of the rooms on the second floor of barracks, Division 8, the occupant of one of the rooms began to grow restless. For the occupant had promised himself and others to awaken them. And awaken he did suddenly, and turned over, rubbed his eyes, and sat up.
"Mark! Oh, Mark!" he called, softly. "Git up, thar! It"s time to be hustlin"!"
There was no answer, and Texas got up, yawning, and went to the other bed.
"Git up thar, you prize fighter you!"
And as he spoke he aimed a blow at the bed, and the next moment he started back in amazement, for his hand had touched nothing but a mattress, and Texas knew that the bed was empty.
"Wow!" he muttered. "He"s gone without me!"
And with this thought in his mind he rushed to his watch to see if he were too late.
No, it was just ten minutes to four, and Texas started hastily to dress, wondering at the same time what on earth could have led Mark to go so early and without his friend.
"That was the goldurndest queer trick I ever did hear of in my life, by jingo!"
It took him but a few short moments to fling his clothes on; and then he stepped quickly across the hall and entered a room on the other side.
"I wonder if that Parson"s gone with him," he muttered.
The "Parson" had not, for Texas found him engaged in encasing his long, bony legs in a pair of trousers that would have held a dozen such.