"Won't there be a surprise when they see 'em up there!" he muttered. "And won't Crabtree have a job getting them down!"
"Oh, my, what a thing to do!" came a voice from out of the darkness. Pepper whirled around quickly, but the speaker had vanished, banging a door after him.
"Who was that?" was the question Pepper asked himself. He could not place the voice, and was much disturbed. Would the intruder, who had seen his actions, expose him?
"I'll have to chance it," he told himself rather dubiously. "I can't get the teeth down anyway. Too bad! I thought I was alone!" And then he hurried off to bed in anything but a comfortable frame of mind.
CHAPTER XX
PEPPER A PRISONER
At the usual hour the next morning Josiah Crabtree arose and dressed himself. He was in a far from happy frame of mind, for a tailor's bill he had to pay was higher than he thought it ought to be.
Having donned his garments, and washed himself and combed his hair, he turned to the stand to get his new set of teeth.