t apprehension. She was decidedly
dangerous, and her insubordination must be nipped in the bud. She seized
Ida roughly by the arm, and striding with her to the closet already
spoken of, unlocked it, and, rudely pushing her in, locked the door
after her.

"Stay there till you know how to behave," she said.

"How did you manage to come it over her family?" inquired Dick.

His wife gave substantially the account with which the reader is already
familiar.

"Pretty well done, old woman!" exclaimed Dick, approvingly. "I always
said you was a deep un. I always says, if Peg can't find out how a thing
is to be done, then it can't be done, nohow."

"How about the counterfeit coin?" she asked.

"We're to be supplied with all we can put off, and we are to have half
for our trouble."

"That is good. When the girl, Ida, gets a little tamed down, we'll give
her something to do."

"Is it safe? Won't she betray us?"

"We'll manage that, or at least I will. I'll work on her fears, so she
won't any more dare to say a word about us than to cut her own head
off."

"All right, Peg. I can trust you to do what's right."

Ida sank down on the floor of the closet into which she had been thrust.
Utter darkness was around her, and a darkness as black seemed to hang
over all her prospects of future happiness. She had been snatched in a
moment from parents, or those whom she regarded as such, and from a
comfortable and happy, though humble home, to this dismal place. In
place of the kindness and indulgence to which she had been accustomed,
she was now treated with harshness and cruelty.

CHAPTER XVII

SUSPENSE

"It doesn't, somehow, seem natural," said the cooper, as he took his
seat at the tea table, "to sit down without Ida. It seems as if half the
family were gone."

"Just what I've said to myself twenty times to-day," remarked his wife.
"Nobody can tell how much a child is to them till they lose it."

"Not lose it," corrected Jack.

"I didn't mean to say that."

"When you used that word, mother, it made me feel just as if Ida wasn't
coming back."

"I don't know why it is," said Mrs. Harding, thoughtfully, "but I've had
that same feeling several times today. I've felt just as if something or
other would happen to prevent Ida's coming back."

"That is only because she's never been away before," said the cooper,
cheerfully. "It isn't best to borrow trouble, Martha; we shall have
enough of it without."

"You nev