ttle fire caught, blazed for a few moments, and fell to a steady
glow. Bob fished out one of the chair rungs, jammed the cool end firmly
in one of the open cracks between the timbers of the room, turned his
back, and deliberately pressed the band around his elbows against the
live coal.

A smell of burning cloth immediately filled the air. After a moment the
coal went out. Bob replaced the charred rung in the fire, extracted
another, and repeated the operation.

It was exceedingly difficult to gauge the matter accurately, as Bob soon
found out to his cost. He managed to burn more holes in his garment--and
himself--than in the bonds. However, he kept at it, and after a half
hour's steady and patient effort he was able to snap asunder the last
strands. He stretched his arms over his head in an ecstasy of physical
freedom.

That was all very well, but what next? Bob was suddenly called to a
decision which had up to that moment seemed inconceivably remote.
Heretofore, an apparent impossibility had separated him from it. Now
that impossibility was achieved.

A moment's thought convinced him of the senseless hazard of attempting
to slip out through any of the doors or windows. The moon was bright,
and Saleratus Bill would have taken his precautions. Bob attacked the
floor. Several boards proved to be loose. He pried them up cautiously,
and so was enabled to drop through into the open space beneath the
house. Thence it was easy to crawl away. Saleratus Bill's precautions
were most likely taken, Bob argued to himself, with a view toward a man
bound at the elbows, not to a man with two hands. In this he was
evidently correct, for after a painful effort, he found himself among
the high grasses of the meadow.

There were now, as he recognized, two courses open to him: he could
either try to discover Saleratus Bill's sleeping place and by surprise
overpower that worthy as he slept; or he could make the best of the
interim before his absence was discovered to get as far away as
possible. Both courses had obvious disadvantages. The most immediate to
the first alternative was the difficulty, failing some clue, of finding
Saleratus Bill's sleeping place without too positive a risk of
discovery; the most immediate to the second was the difficulty of
getting to the other side of the river. As Saleratus Bill might be at
any one of a thousand places, in or out of doors; whereas the river
could be crossed only by the bridge. Bob, with