It was early the next morning. The sun was just starting to peek over the hills when Daniel was awakened by George, the doctor, standing over him.
“Sir Mark has a bad cough and there won’t be any school today.”
“Thank you for telling me, give him my best wishes, please. And if you don’t mind I’ll go back to sleep.”
Daniel rolled over.
George roughly rolled him back over.
“Do you think that I came all the way up here to tell you that?” Without waiting for a reply he answered himself. “Of course not! I need you to go into the forest and gather some wild plants for me so I can make him some cough syrup. There is a note of what I need in the basket.” With that he shoved the basket into Daniel’s hands and left. Daniel slid out of bed with a sigh and pulled a blue smock over his head and started dressing.
Meanwhile, Eileen was slowly opening her eyes. It was morning. She gingerly tested the floor with her foot.
“Oh! It’s cold!” She pulled on her slippers and stood up and stretched. Peering out of the narrow window she saw Daniel strolling down the path in the direction of the woods.
“Hmmmm,” she muttered to herself. “I wonder where he’s going?”
She quickly dressed and dashed outside, being careful not to wake anyone. The drawbridge was already down since Daniel had just used it.
Eileen saw him at a short distance ahead of her. He appeared to be reading something.
Daniel inspected the list that George had given him. As he read he heard a sound in front of him.
“Crack!”
Daniel looked up, but there was nobody there.
“Must have been a squirrel or something,” he thought.
He strolled a few paces forward and crouched down to pick up a small plant growing near the base of a large pine tree. When Daniel straightened up to put the young sprout into his basket a hand reached out from behind the large pine and grabbed his arm, jerking him backwards, the plant and the basket dropping to the ground. Daniel found himself in the presents of about ten rough looking men who were all emerging from behind the trees. Their clothing was somewhat torn up and very filthy as if they had been wearing them for a very long time, which was probably the case. One of them was tying Daniel’s struggling arms together with a thick prickly rope. Another had a hand clasped over his mouth while still another was trying to take control of Daniel’s ever kicking legs. A tall thin man with dark hair, beard, and mustache walked slowly towards him, smiling.
“Well, well, well, I have you at last I see.”
Eileen had seen everything. For a few seconds she was too shocked to move.
Daniel managed to cast a glance backwards, seeing Eileen, he yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Quick, get help! Save yourself! Run. . .”
One of the gang members clasped a hand over his mouth. Eileen saw the man retract his hand sharply from Daniel’s mouth as Daniel bit him. Daniel tried to shout something out to her, but the man, angrily grabbed a stick and slung it over his poor victim’s head.
Eileen threw her hands up over her mouth and gasped as Daniel fell senseless to the ground.
Eileen wasn’t known as a fast runner; in fact, someone had once said that she ran like a chicken. Leaping over logs and ducking under branches she ran as she had never run before. She wasn’t sure if she was being followed, but she didn’t dare look back!
