“Stop it! Oh stop! You’re killing me!”
“Robbers!” gasped Johnny.
“Or them British devils!” cried Tom, looking desperately for the staircase. He finally saw it, winding up from a little alcove that led to the kitchen, and in a flash he and Johnny pounded up the narrow treads, bursting breathlessly into a long hall at the top. From a room on the side toward the river emerged another half-stifled cry.
“In here!” shouted Tom, flinging the door open.
Then he stood quite still. The sight before him was such a one as he had never seen by the falls of Derryfield. Johnny’s astonished gasp told him that his friend was as taken aback as he.
Sally Rose Townsend sat precariously on the edge of a four-poster bed, her face flushed and distorted. Granny Greenleaf stood in front of her, her hands busy about the girl’s dress—except that Sally Rose wore no dress. Her shoulders were bare and gleamed whitely in the candlelight, but her entire body below her shoulders seemed to be shut up in some sort of cage. The cage gapped apart in the middle to show an expanse of some white fabric underneath. It was gripped firmly together at a point just above the girl’s waist, and again below.
“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” Gran was muttering. “I can’t get this foolish contrivance apart, and there isn’t a locksmith left in town. I believe there’s a blacksmith, though. We’ll send Kitty to fetch the blacksmith. Mercy, where is Kitty? I never thought of her before. Where has Kitty gone?”
“Quick! Cover me up, Gran!” gasped Sally Rose frantically, her breath short, her words not quite clear.
Gran glanced backward over her shoulder. Then she turned completely round and faced the intruders.
“Johnny Pettengall! And you—” she peered closer, “the thief who made off with my son’s musket! What are you doing in the bedchamber of a decent lass?”