And while this lively scrimmage was going on in the front of the house, Luke Maslin in the rear took advantage of the opportunity to scramble out of the window through which he had been forced to effect an entrance, and, reaching the ground, he took to his heels and made off into the line of woods beyond the fence as fast as his heels would carry him.
“Let me up, you young imp!” exclaimed Mudgett, panting for breath after several ineffectual efforts on his part to dislodge Dick from an advantageous position on his chest.
“Do you give in?” asked the almost equally breathless boy, refusing to budge an inch from his perch.
“No, hang you for a meddlesome little monkey! But if you don’t let me up, I’ll break your head!”
“I don’t think you will, Mr. Mudgett,” answered Dick, stoutly.
“You know my name, eh? Who the dickens are you, anyway?” said the rascal in a tone that showed his surprise.
“Never mind who I am,” returned the lad. “I’ve got you dead to rights now, so you might just as well throw up your hands at once.”
“Not on your life!” gritted Mudgett, renewing the struggle.
But he might just as well have saved his strength, for Joe having mastered Tim Bunker and bound his arms behind his back with the whip-lash belonging to the buggy, now came to his chum’s assistance, and Mudgett, with a villainous scowl, gave up the fight and suffered himself to be secured with one of the traces which Joe took off the horse.
“I’m afraid these men meant to kill me, thinking I had money,” said old Adam Fairclough to Dick, in trembling tones, when the lad stepped up to assure him that he no longer was in danger of molestation. “But I’m a poor old man. Poor—very poor.”