Meanwhile the prisoner in the "black hole" was fast sinking into a heavy torpor, which seemed proof against even the ceaseless torment of the swarming flies, when the sound of a well-known and hated voice outside his prison roused him like the sudden shock of a blow.
"We shall be well rid of the rascal; such a fellow is a disgrace to the name of Englishman!"
"Am I?" growled Bob Burton through his set teeth. "And what are you?"
But just then his attention was diverted to a strange, rustling, scraping noise overhead, as if something were dragging itself along the roof of his prison. What could it be? A rat? a snake? and his hands were tied!
But the next moment appeared at the air-hole, high above him, a fresh, child-like face, framed in golden hair—the face of little Freddy Hardman, the colonel's son. An instant more, and the boy's slim figure had wormed itself through the opening (which was only just wide enough to let it pass), and had dropped lightly down on to the floor at Bob Burton's side.
"They wouldn't let me in to see you," said the little hero, with a gleeful laugh; "but I'd made up my mind that I would come, so I just went up into the store-house, and climbed through the window down on to this roof, and then squeezed through the air-hole, and here I am. Poor old Bob! why, your face is all bleeding, I declare; and how those horrid flies must have been plaguing you! Let me tie it up for you with my handkerchief."
And the kind little fingers tenderly wiped the dust and blood from the hurt, and bound it up dexterously enough.
"Ah! if only they was all like you!" said Burton brokenly; "you doesn't preach and jaw at a chap—you jist loves him!"
No words could have better summed up the secret of that power by which One whose very name poor Bob had never heard, save in the form of an oath, had conquered the whole world.