“I didn’t say just that,” replied Jack. “If going to work for you would get me out of this scrape, I’d do it. But I shall have to appear at my trial, and then, if convicted of housebreaking, have to serve out a sentence, anyway; so the little time I’ve to wait I may as well spend in jail over my books.”
“I don’t know but you take about the right view on ’t,” said Sellick, soothed by the explanation; and the horse was allowed to slacken his speed. “I thought fust you’d been talking with Billy. Billy thinks he has a hard time; but he’s slow. Me and you’d git along finely together!”
“There’s the jail!” said Jack, with a sudden sinking of the heart.
“That’s the mansion,” remarked Sellick. “The mouse-trap, I call it; easy to git in, hard to git out. You’ll have to trade hats agin now.”
The constable, who had charge of the articles which the prisoner had left at the squire’s at the time of his escape, had let him put on the hat when they started to ride over to the deacon’s; but it was necessary for him to retain it in his custody.
“Never mind,” said Jack, “I sha’n’t have much use for a hat here, I suppose. Old Scarecrow’s will do.”
“And arter your sentence, you’ll be furnished with a cap at the public expense,” added the constable, as he drove up to the door of the jail.
Jack looked with gloomy misgivings at the barred windows and massy front of the great stone building; and for a moment his spirit failed him. Had he not acted foolishly in givinz-father, Captain Berrick, there, with the other prisoners; all his endeavors to do right, and his boasted chance for himself, since that day; his friends left behind, whom he might never see again; the strange calamity that had overtaken him, the long confinement, the dubious future. And the poor lad burst into tears.
“Come!” said Sellick. “Here we be at the end of our journey, as the runaway pigs said, when they went on the table, roasted, for dinner. Never mind your things; I’ll hand ’em out, arterwards. Here comes the kind-hearted keeper of this tavern to welcome his guest. What! crying, sonny? Changed your mind yit?”
“No!” and Jack was himself again. “I’m ready!”—his resolution to pursue an open, upright course, and take with a brave heart whatever happened, returning like a strong tide to buoy him up.