d to bring you to
this!"

"Come, come, Bob, enough of that. They _are_ a little soreish, but
nothing to what they would have been had you not stopped them. But, I
say, what _is_ this secret? I'm dying to know. My dear boy, you've no
idea how you looked when you were spouting like that. You made my flesh
creep, I assure you. Come, out with it; what's the secret?"

I felt, and no doubt looked, somewhat confused.

"Do you know, Jack," said I, solemnly, "I have no secret whatever!"

Jack gasped and stared--

"No secret, Bob!"

"Not the most distant shadow of one."

Jack pulled out his watch, and said in a low voice--

"Bob, my boy, we have just got about three-quarters of an hour to live.
When these villains come back, and find that you've been humbugging
them, they'll brain us on the spot, as sure as my name is John Brown and
yours is Robert Smith--romantic names, both of 'em; especially when
associated with the little romance in which we are now involved. Ha!
ha! ha!"

I shrank back from my friend with the terrible dread, which had more
than once crossed my mind, that he was going mad.

"Oh, Jack, don't laugh, pray. Could we not invent some secret to tell
them?"

"Not a bad idea," returned my friend, gravely.

"Well, let us think; what could we say?"

"Ay, that's the rub! Suppose we tell them seriously that my wooden leg
is a ghost, and that it haunts those who ill-treat its master, giving
them perpetual bangs on the nose, and otherwise rendering their lives
miserable?"

I shook my head.

"Well, then, suppose we say we've been sent by the Queen of England to
treat with them about the liberation of the niggers at a thousand pounds
a head; one hundred paid down in gold, the rest in American
shin-plasters?"

"That would be a lie, you know, Jack."

"Come, that's good! You're wonderfully particular about truth, for a
man that has just told such tremendous falsehoods about a secret that
doesn't exist."

"True, Jack," I replied, seriously, "I confess that I have lied; but I
did not mean to. I assure you I had no notion of what I was saying. I
think I was bewitched. All your nonsense rolled out, as it were,
without my will. Indeed, I did not mean to tell lies. Yet I confess,
to my shame, that I did. There is some mystery here, which I can by no
means fathom."

"Fathom or not fathom," rejoined my friend, looking at his watch again,
"you got me into this scrape, so I request you to get me