While the youth was running away as fast as he could, considering the fact that he had on no shoes, but had to carry them, as well as his valise and a bundle of clothes, something was taking place back in the deacon’s house that was destined to have quite an effect on Joe’s life.
He had heard a noise, that was certain, and it had come from the interior of the dark house.
But the noise was not made by the deacon. Instead it came from one of two men who were cautiously entering the Blackford homestead through a rear door, which they had opened by the simple but effective method of “nippering the key.”
That is one of them, with a pair of peculiarly shaped pincers, or nippers, had reached the little projecting round end of the key that extends beyond the flat, or ward, part. This is the little end one sometimes sees sticking partly out of the keyhole, if on the opposite side of the door from the key itself.
Grasping this little end in a pair of nippers that held it securely, one of the men easily turned the key—almost as easily as if he had been on the other side of the door using his fingers to twist the opener in the manner intended by law for it to turn.
As the back door of the deacon’s house softly and slowly swung open, two men, wearing masks, quietly entered. And then one of them, as he reached in his pocket for an electric flash lamp, knocked against a chair.
“Keep still! What’s the matter with you, Denton, banging about in that way?” demanded the other of the men in a fierce whisper, which, however, was a most guarded whisper. The sound of it did not carry two feet. “What are you doing, anyhow?”
“I couldn’t help it,” answered Denton. “How was I to know, Jake, that the confounded chair was in the road?”
“You ought to be able to see in the dark,” was the retort. “You’ve been up to enough shady work of late.”
“No more than you!”