The boys now came running from every direction, while sounds from within the nearby farmhouse told that Old Peleg must be switching on his heavy boots.
So Paul, knowing that the only thing left now was a hasty flight, gave the signal arranged for. It meant every fellow for himself until they had put a reasonable distance between themselves and the seat of danger. Then they could meet at a given place, and go home, laughing over the whole affair, and wondering what Peleg would think when he saw what a miraculous transformation had taken place while he slept.
Paul happened to be the very last to run away. Instead of passing out by way of the gate as most of the others did, Paul started to pass over the fence at an inviting point, where two of the bars seemed to be down, and he could gain the adjoining woodlot, from which he might reach the road at his pleasure.
But alas! the best of plans often go amiss. And that gap that yawned in the fence proved a delusion and a snare.
Hardly had Paul made the jump over the two lower bars than he found himself suddenly jerked down, and his head came with a crash on the ground, causing him to see a myriad of stars.
Nor was this all. An unknown power at the same time seemed to lift his lower extremities up in the air at least two feet, so that he appeared to be trying to swim on dry land.
For a moment he was puzzled to account for this remarkable happening; but as his head cleared a bit, and the stars ceased to shoot before his mental vision, he began to get an idea as to what had happened.
Apparently the fellows who had painted the farmer's pigs on the other night must have entered his place from the woods, and through this gap in the fence.
Old Peleg had remembered, and anticipating another invasion sooner or later, he had succeeded in arranging some sort of ingenious trap on the spot.
In jumping Paul had set off the trigger, with the consequence that a noose had instantly tightened around his ankles, and a hogshead partly filled with stones, starting to roll down the slope, had drawn his legs upward.