Whose chamber lamp burneth
No more,——"
He had examined the cock-loft of the school, ridden along the river bank, sneaked beside the fences of popular orchards, and lain in ambush near brushheaps where laying hens most did congregate. He had even tracked, to unprofitable localities, various boys whom he suspected of conveying aid and comfort to the enemy, and all he could show for his pains was a badly sunburned nose, and a pair of boots considerably damaged by brush-wood and concealed stumps.
At noon, on the third day, he was completely exhausted, and determined that if ever a good watermelon could supply a pleasing finale to a noon-day meal, it was then. So he walked out to his own melon-patch, chuckling, as he went, over the strict seclusion of the same, for it occupied the centre of a hollow square, the sides of which consisted of dense rows of tall corn. As he approached this from his own back door, he perceived how vain is the cunning of man when confronted by the intuition of the bad boy; for there—at ease, and enjoying the particularly large melon which he had been reserving against a day when upon his wife might accidentally be inflicted a deluge of company—sat the boys for whom he had been looking.
THE STRONG ARM OF THE LAW.
The constable roared "Halt!" but with no more success than if he were an army officer in the midst of a panic, for the boys separated in the corn rows, and the official was undecided as to which to follow. So, indulging to an injudicious extent in that profanity which so naturally attends indecision and failure, he strove gloomily to the foot of his garden to discover, to his great delight, that Jack had stumbled, fallen and knocked all the breath out of his body without seeming able to regain enough for practical purposes. In an instant Jack was in the official's arms, and though he bit, scratched, kicked and begged, he was speedily invested in a pair of handcuffs in the constable's dining-room, and afterward led slowly through the main street to the town jail.
CHAPTER IX.
THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE.
It was customary in Doveton to put sober offenders against the peace in the second floor rooms of the jail, for these, though not containing everything that a fastidious taste might desire, were well lighted and ventilated. But as the constable led Jack to jail, he thought upon his own despoiled melon patch, so he decided to put the young man into the dungeon which was reserved for the most depraved disturbers and desperate villains. As Jack was pushed into this receptacle he noticed, with a sinking of the heart, that the door was a foot thick, built of most chilling oak-tree hearts, and strapped with huge bars of iron. Not that he had contemplated escape; he was just then too feeble of soul to contemplate anything but his own iniquity; but he had the natural, healthful objection to restraint, and when restraint can be measured by the cubic foot it is depressing almost to idiocy. Then the constable shot four massive bolts, each one of which seemed to give Jack's heart a mighty thump as it grated and groaned into its proper place. Jack turned to look at the window. It was of rough glass, so that a prisoner could not look out; it was only six inches high, though its length was about two feet, and it was crossed both inside and outside by stout bars of iron let into the stone. The furniture, when Jack's eyes became sufficiently accustomed to the dim light to see it all, consisted of a dingy cot of canvas and a broken pitcher containing the water left by the cell's last occupant, who had gone to the state prison two months before for passing counterfeit money. The only decorations were some cobwebs, which in tone harmonized with the general effect of the interior, and an engraving, upon the stone of the lightest side of the cell, of a frightful looking being with horns, hoof and barbed tail, having beneath it the inscription, "ThE DEViL Taik Evry boDDy." The odor of the apartment was undesirable.