offices that was a sign that they
cared no longer about Mr. Jabez Wilson's presence; in other words, that
they had completed their tunnel. But it was essential that they should
use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the bullion might be removed.
Saturday would suit them better than any other day, as it would give
them two days for their escape. For all these reasons I expected them to
come to-night."

"You reasoned it out beautifully," I exclaimed, in unfeigned admiration.
"It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true."

"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it
closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from
the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so."

"And you are a benefactor of the race," said I. He shrugged his
shoulders. "Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use," he
remarked.

[Illustration]

V.--The Ransom of Red Chief[E]

_By O. Henry_

IT looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down
South, in Alabama--Bill Driscoll and myself--when this kidnaping idea
struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of
temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called
Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and
self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we
needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot
scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of
the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural
communities; therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnaping project ought
to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters
out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that
Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and,
maybe, some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the
_Weekly Farmers' Budget_. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named
Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage
fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The
kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the color of
the cover of the magazine you buy