to report
any movement on his part. The door looked more hopeful.

One of the men brought his breakfast, and retired, locking the door
behind him. While he was eating it,--and his appetite did not seem to be
at all impaired by the situation to which he had been reduced,--he saw
Mr. Grant on the lawn, talking with a stranger. His interest was at once
excited, and a closer examination assured him that the visitor was
Squire Wriggs, of Whitestone. The discovery almost spoiled Noddy's
appetite, for he knew that the squire was a lawyer, and had often been
mixed up with cases of house-breaking, horse-stealing, robbery, and
murder; and he at once concluded that the legal gentleman's business
related to him.

His ideas of lawyers were rather confused and indistinct. He knew they
had a great deal to do in the court-house, when men were sent to the
penitentiary and the house of correction for various crimes. He watched
the squire and Mr. Grant, and he was fully satisfied in his own mind
what they were talking about when the latter pointed to the window of
his chamber. He had eaten only half his breakfast, but he found it
impossible to take another mouthful, after he realized that he was the
subject of the conversation between Mr. Grant and the lawyer.

It seemed just as though all his friends, even Miss Bertha, had suddenly
deserted him. That conference on the lawn was simply a plot to take him
to the court-house, and then send him to the penitentiary, the house of
correction, or some other abominable place, even if it were no worse
than a tinker's shop. He was absolutely terrified at the prospect.
After all his high hopes, and all his confidence in his supple limbs,
the judges, the lawyers, and the constables might fetter his muscles so
that he could not get away--so that he could not even run away to sea,
which was his ultimate intention, whenever he could make up his mind to
leave Miss Bertha.

Noddy watched the two gentlemen on the lawn, and his breast was filled
with a storm of emotions. He pictured the horrors of the prison to which
they were about to send him, and his fancy made the prospect far worse
than the reality could possibly have been. Mr. Grant led the way towards
the building occupied by the servants. Noddy was desperate. Squire
Wriggs was the visible manifestation of jails, courts, constables, and
other abominations, which were the sum of all that was terrible. He
decided at once not to wait for a visit fro