e can lock him up in the
back room of my house, while we go and find the constable."

Away they went, guarding their prisoner on the way as if they were
afraid of him.

They soon came to the dwelling of Deacon Abrams.

It was hard for Jack Ogden, but he bore it like a young Mohawk Indian.
It would have been harder if it had not been so late, and if more of
the household had been there to see him. As it was, doors opened,
candles flared, old voices and young voices asked questions, a baby
cried, and then Jack heard a very sharp voice.

"Sakes alive, Deacon! You can't have that ruffian here! We shall all
be murdered!"

"Only till I go and find the constable, Jerusha," said the deacon,
pleadingly. "We'll lock him in the back room, and Barney and
Pettigrew'll stand guard at the gate, with clubs, while Smith and I are
gone."

There was another protest, and two more children began to cry, but Jack
was led on into his prison-cell.

It was a comfortable room, containing a bed and a chair. There was
real ingenuity in the way they secured Jack Ogden. They backed a chair
against a bedpost and made him sit down, and then they tied the chair,
and the wicked young robber in it, to the post.

"There!" said Deacon Abrams. "He can't get away now!" and in a moment
more Jack heard the key turn in the lock, and he was left in the dark,
alone and bound,--a prisoner under a charge of burglary.

"I never thought of this thing happening to me," he said to himself,
gritting his teeth and squirming on his chair. "It's pretty hard. May
be I can get away, though. They thought they pulled the ropes tight,
but then--"

The hempen fetters really hurt him a little, but it was partly because
of the chair.

"May be I can kick it out from under me," he said to himself, "and
loosen the ropes."

Out it came, after a tug, and then Jack could stand up.

"I might climb on the bed, now the ropes are loose," he said, "and lift
the loops over the post. Then I could crawl out of 'em."

He was excited, and worked quickly. In a moment he was standing in the
middle of the room, with only his hands tied behind him.

"I can cut that cord," he thought, "if I can find a nail in the wall."

He easily found several, and one of them had a rough edge on the head
of it, and after a few minutes of hard sawing, the cord was severed.

"It's easy to saw twine," said he. "Now for the next thing."

He went to the window and looked out into the d