from
yon platform in the chapel nex' Sunday, if you like. 'Frank,' I said,
'you asked me to be your wife, an' I haven't answered. I do now. I'll
meet you at the prison door when you come out, if you please, an' I'll
marry you straight away.' Those were my very words, Mr. Superintendent,
an' I mean to keep to them.'

Mrs. Haddon stood with flaming face and throbbing bosom, a tragedy queen
in miniature, suffused with honest emotion. Ephraim sat apparently
absorbed in his left boot, thrusting his finger into the hole in the
sole, as if probing a wound.

'You wouldn't think, ma'am,' he said presently with the air of a martyr,
'that I gave fourteen-and six for them pair o' boots not nine weeks
since.'

Mrs. Haddon turned away with an impatient gesture.

'If you've said all you have to say, you might let me get on with my
work.'

'I think that's all, Mrs. Haddon.' The searcher arose, and stood for a
moment turning up the toe of one boot and then the other; he seemed to be
calculating his losses on the bargain. 'You hand over the boy Richard, I
understand, ma'am?'

'I'll do what is right, Mr. Shine.'

'The Committee said as much. The Committee has great respect for you,
Mrs. Haddon.'

Ephraim lifted his feet with an effort, and carried them slowly from the
house, carefully and quietly closing the kitchen door after him. About
half a minute later he opened the door again, just as carefully and as
quietly, and said:

'Good night, ma'am, and God bless you.'

Then he went away, his hands bunched behind him, walking like a man
carrying a heavy burden.

CHAPTER IV

DICK HADDON and Ted McKnight were still at large next morning, and
nothing was heard of them till two o'clock in the afternoon, when
Wilson's man, Jim Peetree, reported having discovered the boys swimming
in the big quarry in the old Red Hand paddock. Jim, seeing a prospect of
covering himself with glory, made a dash after the truants; but they
snatched up their clothes and ran for the saplings up the creek, all
naked as they were, and Jim was soon out of the hunt--though he captured
Ted's shirt, and produced it as a guarantee of good faith.

That night three boys--three of the faithful--Jacker McKnight, Phil Doon,
and Billy Peterson, stole through Wilson's paddock carrying mysterious
bundles, and taking as many precautions to avoid observation and pursuit
as if they were really, as they pretended to be with the fine imagination
of early boyhood, desper