“The paper didn’t say,” answered Sam. “I suppose his pals dug the hole and covered him up.”
“My!” exclaimed Benny Mallow. “I won’t dare to go out into the garden to gather tomatoes or pull corn for mother.”
“Perhaps he’s behind that very fence,” suggested Napoleon Nott. “I had a book that told about a Frenchman that laid so close against a fence that the police walked right past him without seeing him, and then he got up and killed them, and buried them, and—”
“Keep the rest for to-morrow, Notty,” suggested Canning Forbes; “but put plenty of salt on, so it won’t spoil. We’ve got as much of it as we can swallow to-day.”
“I wonder why Paul don’t come out?” said Will Palmer.
“He isn’t at home,” said Benny; “and Mr. Morton is very much worried about him, too; but I told him that he needn’t be afraid; that Paul could take care of himself even in a fight with a counterfeiter.”
“Good for you, Benny!” exclaimed Will Palmer. “If Paul only had his rifle with him, I’d back him against the worst character in the world. But say, boys, while we’re lounging about here the fellow may have been captured and brought back to jail. Let’s go up and see.”
All that could be learned, when the jail was reached, was that the sheriff had sworn in ten special deputies, and these, with the sheriff himself, were scouring the town and the adjacent country. The sheriff had wanted to make a deputy of Mr. Morton, for men who were sure they could recognize the prisoner at sight were very scarce; but the teacher had excused himself by saying he was not yet legally a citizen of Laketon. Mr. Wardwell said to two or three gentlemen that this was undoubtedly a mere trick to cover the teacher’s foolish tenderness toward the prisoner whom he had visited so often, and some of the gentlemen said that they shouldn’t wonder if Mr. Wardwell was right.
When dinner-time came, an unforeseen trouble occurred to the boys: they could not go in a crowd to dinner unless some boy felt like inviting the crowd to take dinner with him, and no boy felt justified in doing that unless he first asked his mother whether she had enough for so many; so the party divided, each boy retaining his trusty stick, and going with beating heart past every fence and wood-pile behind which he could not see.
Benny Mallow had just reached home, with his heart away up in the top of his throat, and stuck there so tight that he was sure he could not swallow a mouthful, no matter how nice the dinner might be, when he saw, crossing his street, and at least a quarter of a mile away, three people, one of whom he was sure must be Paul. He shaded his eyes, looked intently for an instant, and then became so certain that it was Paul, whom he felt himself simply dying to see, that he forgot his heart and his dinner, and even the danger that might lurk in any one of a dozen places by the way; he even dropped his stick as he sped away as fast as he could run. By the time he reached the place at which he had seen the men the party was two squares farther to the left, and Benny was panting terribly; but as he now knew that it was indeed Paul whom he had seen, he continued to run.