CHAPTER XXV
JACK’S PRISONERS.
Weak-eyed Judge Garty, having sanded the warrant by which Jack was to have been conveyed to jail, and winked hard over it for about fifteen seconds (giving at least six winks to the second) to see that it was all right, shook it in the air at the empty space occupied a moment before by the jolly constable.
“Here! Sellick! where are you? Here’s our mittimus,” he was saying, when occurred the pleasant little catastrophe related in our last chapter.
The room was filled with confusion in an instant, sounds of men laughing, crying out, rushing to and fro, and clamoring at door and window.
“What’s the matter?” called Squire Peternot, in a loud, stern voice. “Where’s the constable? where’s the prisoner?”
“Gone!” answered somebody in the crowd.
“Gone?” cried Judge Garty, rising to his feet, still shaking his paper and winking blindly. “He can’t go without our warrant! Sellick knows better ’n that!”
“But the boy don’t!” cried Sellick, running to the table.
“The boy!” echoed Peternot; “where is he?”