prepared to
give him a warm reception. Before he devoted himself to the task of
holding down that log by the roadside, he took the trouble to cut a long
hickory switch, and to place it beside the log, out of sight. He meant
to give Dan such a thrashing that he would never play any more tricks
upon him.

"Well, about one o'clock, or a little after, while I was a-setting there
and waiting for the game to come along, I heared a noise in the brush,
and, all on a sudden, out popped this feller. He was running like he'd
been sent for, and that's why I suspicioned him. Of course I didn't know
him from Adam, but I asked him would he stop a bit. And he 'lowed he
would, when he seed my gun looking him square in the eye. I brung him
home, and your mam she passed out the clothes-line, and I tied him up."

"Where is mother now?" asked Joe.

"Gone off after more sewing, I reckon," replied Silas, in a tone which
seemed to say that it was a matter that was not worth talking about.
"She helped me figger up what I would get for catching him, and then she
dug out. I'm worth almost as much as you be now, Joey, and that there
mean Dan, who wouldn't stay by and help me, he ain't got a cent. Now
don't you wish you hadn't played that trick on me this morning?"

"Never mind that," interposed Joe, who did not care to stand by and
listen to an angry altercation which might end in a fight or a foot-race
between his father and Dan. "If we are going to deliver this man to the
sheriff to-night, we had better be moving."

"Do you reckon the sheriff will hand over the twenty-five hundred when I
give up the prisoner?" inquired Silas, as the party walked down the bank
toward the flat.

"Of course he won't."

"What for won't he?"

"Because he hasn't got it with him. Perhaps it was never put into his
hands at all. I haven't received my share yet."

"Then I reckon I'd best hold fast to him till I'm sure of my money,"
said Silas, reflectively. "I guess I won't take him down to old man
Warren's to-night."

"I guess you will, unless you want to get into trouble with the law,"
said Joe, decidedly. "If you don't give him up of your own free will,
the sheriff will take him away from you."

Silas protested that he couldn't see any sense in such a law as that,
but he lent his aid in pushing off the flat.

Dan, who was almost too angry to breathe, had more than half a mind to
stay at home; but his curiosity to hear and see all that was said and
done