sion.

"It is a good cause and a right cause which I invite you to join. I
must not explain it more to you just now, but just think the matter
over; and stay, it's just possible I shall remain in Nottingham all
to-morrow. Will you meet me in the evening as soon as it is dusk, down
by the bank of the river, where you fell in with me just now? I will
explain matters more fully to you then."

Jack did not answer for a minute or more. "I must think of it," he said
at last. "You may be a very honest man, Mr Pearson, and your
intentions towards me perhaps are fair, but I tell you again, I have no
fancy to take a leap in the dark. I have a plan in view myself, and I
would rather carry that out than try any other. You have wished me
farewell to-night already, and now I will wish you the same, and leave
you."

Saying this, Jack took the stranger's proffered hand, and shaking it,
hurried off in the direction in which he was previously going. Master
Pearson looked after him for an instant, and nodding his head, said to
himself, "He is an honest lad as well as a brave one, and may be made of
use if I can get a bridle into his mouth."

CHAPTER FOUR.

FIRE NEAR MR STRELLEY'S WAREHOUSE--JACK DEANE SHOWS THAT HE IS A LAD OF
COURAGE.

Jack soon again scaled the garden wall, and stood under his bedroom
window. He had left it wide open; it was now almost closed. The old
pear-tree nailed against the wall enabled him to climb up a considerable
distance, so as to reach the window-sill, by which he could haul himself
up, and get into his room.

"Probably the wind has blown it to," he said to himself. "I hope no one
has found out my absence."

Climbing up, he gently pushed back the window. On looking in, what was
his dismay to see his father seated in the chair by the table, with a
candle now almost burned out, and a book, from which he had evidently
been reading, before him! His eyes were however closed, and he was
nodding, fast asleep. Jack was a man of action, and always more ready
to face a danger than to avoid it. He crawled in, therefore, as
noiselessly as he could, and sat himself down on a chest at the farther
end of the room, waiting for his father to awake. Jack did not trouble
himself much as to what he should say, planning, and inventing, and
twisting, and turning the truth in all sorts of ways, or inventing all
sorts of falsehoods, but, like an honest man, he determined to tell the
whole truth openly