“I wish we’d yanked over his whole barn, and then gone on!”
This from Jerry, wrathfully.
“Well, it’s too bad it’s so gloomy in here that I can’t even see to read my notes, or look for any specimens,” lamented Professor Snodgrass.
Then they remained silent for a few minutes, going over in their minds their unpleasant situation. They sat on some saw horses which had been hastily thrust into their prison before the door had been locked.
“Seems to be a pretty solid sort of a place,” observed Ned, after a pause, during which he had pounded and kicked on the sides of their shack.
“It is,” agreed Jerry. “They don’t use smoke houses much any more, and as they were built years ago, when the farmers had lots of time, they made ’em solid. But I wonder how long he’s going to keep us here? The old villain! To have the nerve to ask us a thousand dollars for damages. Why, a hundred would more than pay him!”
“A hundred and fifty would, easily,” declared Ned, “and I’d be willing to settle on that basis, for we ought to be at Danforth now.”
They talked about their trouble for some time, and after an hour or two one of the hired men brought the prisoners some food. They ate heartily and a little later Mr. Muggins approached the smoke house.
“I can’t take you fellers over t’ court t’-day,” he announced, “because one of my hosses is sick. But I’ll take ye over fust thing in th’ mornin’, an’ I’ll have justice, too, unless ye want t’ pay me th’ thousand dollars now.”
“In the first place, we haven’t got it,” declared Jerry, “and, if we did have, we’d never pay that amount.”