At full length, hands under heads, brains mellowed by brandy, the men summed up the situation.  Arved was the first to speak.  He was tall, blond, heavy of figure, and his beard hung upon his chest.  His dissatisfied eyes were cynical when he rallied his companion.  A man of brains this, but careless as the grass.

“Quell, let us think this thing out carefully.  It is nearly six o’clock.  At six o’clock the cells will be unlocked, and then,—­well, McKracken will damn our bones, for he gets a fat board fee from my people, and the table is not so cursed good at the Hermitage that he misses a margin of profit!  What will he do?  Set the dogs after us?  No, he daren’t; we’re not convicts—­we’re only mad folk.”  He smiled good-humouredly, though his white brow was dented as if by harsh thoughts.

Quell’s little bloodshot eyes stared up into a narrow channel of foliage, at the end of which was a splash of blue sky.  He was mean-appearing, with a horselike head, his mustache twisted into a savage curl.  His forehead was abnormal in breadth and the irritable flashes of fire in his eyes told the story of a restless soul.  The nostrils expanded as he spoke:—­

“We’re only mad folk, as you say; nevertheless, the Lord High Keeper will send his police patrol wagon after us in a jiffy.  He went to bed dead full last night, so his humour won’t be any too sweet when he hears that several of his boarders have vanished.  He’ll miss you more than me; I’m not at the first table with you swells.”

Quell ended his speech with so disagreeable an inflection that Arved was astonished.  He looked around and spat at a beetle.

“What’s wrong with you, my hearty?  I believe you miss your soft iron couch.  Or did you leave it this morning left foot foremost?  Anyhow, Quell, don’t get on your ear.  We’ll push to town as soon as it’s twilight, and I know a little crib near the river where we can have all we want to eat and drink.  Do you hear—­drink!” Quell made no answer.  The other continued:—­

“Besides, I don’t see why you’ve turned sulky simply because your family sent you up to the Hermitage.  It’s no disgrace.  In fact, it steadies the nerves, and you can get plenty of booze.”

“If you have the price,” snapped his friend.

“Money or no money, McKracken’s asylum—­no, it’s bad taste to call it that; his retreat, ah, there’s the word!—­is not so awful.  I’ve a theory that our keepers are crazy as loons; though you can’t blame them, watching us, as they must, from six o’clock in the morning until midnight.  Say, why were you put away?”

“Crazy, like yourself, I suppose.”  Quell grinned.

“And now we’re cured.  We cured ourselves by flight.  How can they call us crazy when we planned the job so neatly?”

Arved began to be interested in the sound of his own voice.  He searched his pockets and after some vain fumbling found a half package of cigarettes.