"Well, I wouldn't think about it any more just now," said good-natured Stebbins. "You look like you had been dragged through a keyhole instead of a window-pane. This town we're coming to is the biggest town you ever saw."
Barney could not respond to this attempt to divert his attention. He could only brood upon the fact that he was innocent, and would be punished as if he were guilty, and that it was Nick Gregory, his chosen friend, who had brought him to this pass.
He would not be unmanly, and injure Nick with a possibly unfounded suspicion, but his heart burned with indignation and contempt when he thought of him. He felt that he would go through fire and water to be justly revenged upon him.
He determined that, if ever he should see Nick again, even though years might intervene, he would tax him with the injury he had wrought, and make him answer for it.
Barney clenched his fists as he looked back at the ethereal blue shadows that they said were the solid old hills.
Perhaps, however, if he had known where, in the misty uncertainty that enveloped Goliath Mountain, Nick Gregory was at this moment,—far away in the lonely woods, helpless with his broken arm, perched high up on the "Old Man's Chimney,"—Barney might have thought himself the more fortunately placed of the two.
Before he was well aware of it, the wagon was jolting into the town. He took no notice of how much larger the little village was than any he had ever seen before. His attention was riveted by the faces of the people who ran to the doors and windows, upon recognizing the officers, to stare at him as one of the burglars.
When the wagon reached the public square, a number of men came up and stopped it.
Barney was surprised that they took so little notice of him. They were talking loudly and excitedly to the officers, who grew at once loud and excited, too.
The boy roused himself, and began to listen to the conversation. The burglars had been captured!—yes, that was what they were saying. The deputy-sheriff had nabbed the whole gang in a western district of the county this morning early, and they were lodged at this moment in jail. Barney's heart sank. Would he be put among the guilty creatures? He flinched from the very idea.