"Fell down?"
"Yes, sir, and hurt my ankle, so't I can't walk," he added, beginning to blubber.
"How did you do that?"
Sam began, and detailed the most outrageous falsehood of which his daring genius was capable. He had met with the most dreadful mischances, by falling over a "big stun," which some villainous boys had rolled into the road, expressly to place his limbs in peril, as he passed in the dark.
"But how did the boys know how to lay the stone so exactly as to accomplish their purpose?" asked Chester, suspecting the untruth.
For a moment Sam was posed. But his genius did not desert him.
"Oh," said he, "I always walk jest in one track along there by Mr. Cobbett's, on the right-hand side, about a yard from the fence. I s'pose they knowed it, and so rolled the stone up there."
"You tell the most absurd stories in the world," replied Chester, indignantly. "Who do you expect is going to believe them? Now, let me tell you, if I find you have been lying about that horse, and if you have done him any mischief, I will tan you within an inch of your life!"
Sam hastened to declare that he had spoken gospel truth; at the same time feeling a dreadful twinge of conscience at the thought that, for aught he knew to the contrary, Frank might still be running, riderless, twenty miles away.
Mrs. Royden now usurped the conversation, to give him a severe scolding, in the midst of which he limped off to bed, to pass a sleepless, painful and unhappy night, with his bruised limbs, and in the fear of retribution, which was certain to follow, when his sin and lies should all be found out.