“I’ll have out a s’arch-warrant,” Peternot declared, “and seize that coin wherever it can be found. If the deacon’s boys are mixed up in’t, they’ll find it’s a sorry business!”
Jack grew faint at heart, as he watched and listened. The men with the lantern and club passed the window through which he had escaped, and paused for a minute or more to examine the ground all about the lilac-bush. They found footprints, but he heard nothing about either hat or shoes. They then passed on, and the door closed behind them as they entered the house.
Troubled with heavy misgivings, feeling that he would give almost anything to be well out of this scrape, Jack rose and slunk away, without attempting to solve the mystery of the hat and shoes. He was no longer so anxious as he had been to get the money once more into his possession; and finding Hank and Tug faithful to their appointment, he said to them, “When you find Cub, hide the money, and keep it till you hear from me.” And he told them of the threatened search-warrant.
Hank swore fidelity to Jack’s interest; and the wretched boy,—never more wretched in mind, in all his checkered life, than at that hour,—parting from the brothers on the border of the woods, hurried home, and reached Deacon Chatford’s house just as the moon was appearing above the eastern clouds. The windows were dark; the folks had all gone to bed, leaving the kitchen door unfastened for him. He entered softly; but as he was going up to his room, the voice of Mrs. Chatford called to him, “That you, Jack?”
“Yes ’m.”
“What made you so late?”
“I didn’t think it was so late,” replied Jack; “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you awake.”
“Never mind, if you have come home all right. It was thoughtful in you to take off your shoes. I wasn’t asleep; I couldn’t help feeling anxious about you.”
How kind, how good she was! Jack, filled with a sense of guilt and dread, longed to go to her bedside and relieve his burdened heart by confessing what he had done. But just then the deacon spoke, in the impatient tone of one whose sleep had been disturbed: “Did you bolt the door?”
“Yes, sir.”