"Who are you, young man, that have the impudence to enter the house of a lady, and entice away her daughter?" foamed he.
"I am Ernest Thornton. I did not enter the house after you rode off with the lady; I did not entice the girl away, and she is not the lady's daughter."
"Silence! Don't you contradict me. You ran away with the girl!"
I whistled a popular air, simply to prove that I was not intimidated, and that Tom was not getting along very rapidly.
"Once more, and for the last time," roared Tom, foaming with passion, "will you tell me where the girl is, or will you take the consequences?"
"If it's all the same to you, I'll take the consequences," I answered.
"Very well; you will take them, or you will tell me the whole truth," said he, savagely, as he rushed to the door.
There was a key in the lock, which I seldom or never used. He took it out, left the room, and locked the door behind him. He was evidently so much in earnest that he did not intend I should escape the fiery furnace he was preparing for me. I could not but laugh at his folly in thinking to confine a live boy of sixteen in the chamber of a cottage. I concluded that he had gone for a stick, a club, or some other weapon, with which to reduce me to subjection.
Though I felt able with the base-ball bat to defend myself from the assaults of Tom, I did not court the conflict. There was room for an accident which might deprive me of the power to serve Kate in the hour of her extremity; and I was disposed to keep her on the safe side, if I did not keep there myself. I heard the heavy footsteps of Tom Thornton, as he descended the stairs, and walked through the hall. I concluded that he would see my uncle before he returned. I slipped off my shoes, and put one in each side pocket of my sack. Fearing that my bat might be removed during my absence, I thrust it up the chimney, at the fireplace, resting one end on a jamb, where I could easily reach it.
Carefully opening the window, I stepped down upon the roof of the library, and thence to the top of the bay window, to the position I had before occupied. My uncle was in the library, but Tom was not with him, and I concluded that he had gone out of the cottage for the weapon he wanted. I felt safe enough, however; for, by lying down on the top of the bay window, close to the wall of the building, I could not be seen by any one who did not come close to the place where I was concealed.