This story justified the stoutest-hearted boy, even if he owned a rifle, in preferring to keep away from any and all places in which such a person might hide; but the story seemed afterward to have been only half told, for as it passed through Napoleon Nott’s lips a bowie-knife, a sword-cane, a bottle of poison, and a long piece of a prison chain were neatly added to the bad man’s armament; so no boy felt ashamed to confess to any other boy that he really was afraid to venture beyond the edge of the town.
“You can never tell where such fellows may hide,” said Sam Wardwell to several boys who had gathered at the school wood-pile, which was a general rendezvous for boys who had nothing in particular to do. “I’ve read in the police reports in the New York paper that father takes of policemen finding thieves and murderers and other bad men in the queerest kind of places. They’re very fond of hiding in stables.”
“Then I know one thing,” said Ned Johnston, promptly—“our hens may steal nests all over the hay-loft, and hatch all the late chickens they want to, to die as soon as the frost comes, but I won’t go inside of our barn again until that man is found.”
“And I’ll stay out of our stable,” said Bert Sharp, “though it is fun to go in there sometimes, when a fellow hasn’t anything else to do, and tickle the horse’s flanks to see him kick.”
“You ought to be kicked yourself for doing such a mean trick,” said Charlie Gunter. “Where else do they hide, Sam?”
“Oh, all sorts of places,” said Sam—“sometimes inside of barrels. And just think of it! there’s at least twenty empty barrels in the yard of our store, besides a great big hogshead that would hold six counterfeiters.”
“Perhaps he’s in that hogshead now, with his confederate,” suggested Charlie Gunter. “Can’t we all get on the roof of the store and look down into it?”
“I won’t go,” said Ned Johnston, very decidedly; “they might shoot up at us.”
“One fellow,” continued Sam, “was found buried just under the top of the ground; he just had his nose and mouth out so he could breathe, but he had even those covered with some grass so as to hide them.”
“How did he bury himself?” asked Canning Forbes.