“Do ye know them stockin’s, Mis’ Chatford?”
“Why—sure—they—they are Jack’s stockings!” said the good woman, sadly puzzled to know how they had come into Peternot’s possession.
“And them shoes,—does anybody recognize ’em?”
“They’re Jack’s shoes!” exclaimed Phin, having taken a near view,—“his Sunday pair!”
“Now for this hat,” said the squire, holding it up on the end of his cane, “whose hat is it? Anybody know the hat?”
“I believe that and the other things all belong to Jack,” said the deacon. “What is the mystery? Come to the point at once! Jack, what is it? Why don’t you speak? Have you lost your tongue?”
The evidence against him appeared so overwhelming, and he really seemed to himself so guilty,—not because he had taken the money, but because he had made use of such means and such companions in accomplishing his object,—that poor Jack could not yet utter an intelligible word in self-defence. He was faltering out some weak denial or excuse, when Peternot interrupted him:—
“If this ain’t enough, pull off the shoes he has on and look at his feet. If you don’t find some marks of rough treatment about the ankles, I miss my calkelation.” Sellick placed the culprit in a chair, and began to take off his shoes.
“The mystery is no mystery, Neighbor Chatford,” the squire went on. “My house was broke into and robbed last night. I ketched one of the thieves by the heels as he was jumpin’ from the winder, and these stockin’s come off in my hands, as he got away; which he did by the help of his accomplices, though not till his feet and shins got some hard rubs on the winder-sill, as ye can see there now!”—Sellick at that moment holding up one of Jack’s legs, variegated with black-and-blue marks and bloody scratches, to the view of his horrified friends.
“I found the hat and shoes under the winder, when I run out arter the burglars. I looked agin with a lantern, and found tracks too big for the shoes, showing he had older confederates. He had two or three with him, at least. I’m glad to learn that Moses is away, so he couldn’t ’a’ been one on ’em; and Phineas, his mother tells me, was in bed by eight o’clock.”