just heard 'em in
time."

"I wasn't after your hens. I didn't know they was there!" gasped the
cook.

"Lock him up!" said the second man warmly.

"I'm goin' to," said the other, "Keep still, you thief!"

"Get up!" said the cook faintly; "you're killin' me.

"Take him in the house and tie him up for the night, and we'll take him
to Winton police station in the morning," said the neighbor. "He's a
desperate character."

As they declined to trust the cook to walk, he was carried into the
kitchen, where the woman, leaving him for a moment, struck a match
and hastily lit a candle. She then opened a drawer and, to the cook's
horror, began pulling out about twenty fathoms of clothes-line.

"The best way and the safest is to tie him in a chair," said the
neighbor. "I remember my gran'-father used to tell a tale of how they
served a highwayman that way once."

"That would be best, I think," said the woman pondering. "He'd be more
comfortable in a chair, though I'm sure he don't deserve it."

They raised the exhausted cook, and placing him in a stout oak chair,
lashed him to it until he could scarcely breathe.

"After my gran'father had tied the highwayman in the chair, he gave him
a crack on the head with a stick," said the neighbor, regarding the cook
thoughtfully.

"They was very brutal in those times," said the cook, before anybody
else could speak.

"Just to keep him quiet like," said the neighbor, somewhat chilled by
the silence of the other two.

"I think he'll do as he is," said the owner of the fowls, carefully
feeling the prisoner's bonds. "If you'll come in in the morning, Pettit,
we'll borrow a cart an' take him over to Winton. I expect there's a lot
of things against him."

"I expect there is," said Pettit, as the cook shuddered. "Well,
good-night."

He returned to his house, and the couple, after carefully inspecting the
cook again, and warning him of the consequences if he moved, blew out
the candle and returned to their interrupted slumbers.

For a long time the unfortunate cook sat in a state of dreary apathy,
wondering vaguely at the ease with which he had passed from crime to
crime, and trying to estimate how much he should get for each. A cricket
sang from the hearthstone, and a mouse squeaked upon the floor. Worn out
with fatigue and trouble, he at length fell asleep.

He awoke suddenly and tried to leap out of his bunk on to the floor and
hop on one leg as a specific for the cramp. The