in a foreign language.

Still, he gathered something of the drift of the speech from the
constable's reply.

"That thar boy's looks hev bamboozled more'n one man ter-day, jes' at
fust," Jim Dow drawled. "_Looks_ ain't nothin'."

"I'd believe 'most anything a boy with a face on him like that would
tell me," said the deputy. "And besides, you see, one of those scamps,"
with a quick nod toward the jail, "has turned State's evidence."

Barney's heart was in a great tumult. It seemed bursting. There was a
hot rush of blood to his head. He was dizzy--and he could not
understand!

State's evidence,--what was that? and what would that do to him?

CHAPTER V

Barney observed that these words produced a marked sensation. The crowd
began to press more closely around the deputy-sheriff's foaming horse.

"Who hev done turned State's evidence?" asked Jim Dow.

"Little Jeff Carew,--you've seen that puny little man a-many a
time--haven't you, Jim? He'd go into your pocket."

"He would, I know, powerful quick, ef he thunk I hed ennything in it,"
said Jim, with a gruff laugh.

"I didn't mean that, though it's true enough. I only went ter say that
he's small enough to go into any ordinary-sized fellow's pocket. Some of
the rest of them wanted to turn State's evidence, but they weren't
allowed. They were harder customers even than Jeff Carew,--regular old
jail-birds."

Barney began to vaguely understand that when a prisoner confesses the
crime he has committed, and gives testimony which will convict his
partners in it, this is called turning "State's evidence."

But how was it to concern Barney?

An old white-haired man had pushed up to the wagon; he polished his
spectacles on his coat-tail, then put them on his nose, and focused them
on Barney. Those green spectacles seemed to the boy to have a solemnly
accusing expression on their broad and sombre lenses. He shrank as the
old man spoke,--

"And is this the boy who was slipped through the window to steal from
Blenkins?"

"No," said the deputy, "this ain't the boy."

Barney could hardly believe his senses.

"Fact is," continued the deputy, with a brisk wave of his hand, "there
wasn't any boy with 'em,--so little Jeff Carew says. _He_ jumped through
the window-pane _himself_. We wouldn't believe that until we measured
one there at the jail of the same size as Blenkins's window-glass, and
he went through it without a wriggle."

Barney sprang to his feet.

"Oh, tel