"We've got him, Mrs. McNamara! He can't get away this time. The young villain!" "They were goin' to brek into me house, indade," said Mrs. McNamara. "The murdherin' vagabones!" "What'll we do with him now, boys?" asked one of his captors. "I don't know where to take him--do you, Deacon Abrams?" "What's your name, you young thief?" sternly demanded another. Jack had begun to think. One of his first thoughts was that a gang of desperate robbers had seized him. The next idea was, that he never met four more stupid-looking men in Mertonville, nor anywhere else. He resolved that he would not tell his name, to have it printed in the _Inquirer_, and so made no answer. "That's the way of thim," said Mrs. McNamara. "He's game, and he won't pache. The joodge'll have to mak him spake. Ye'd betther lock him up, and kape him till day." "That's it, Deacon Abrams." "That's just it," said the man spoken to. "We can lock him up in the back room of my house, while we go and find the constable." Away they went, guarding their prisoner on the way as if they were afraid of him. They soon came to the dwelling of Deacon Abrams. It was hard for Jack Ogden, but he bore it like a young Mohawk Indian. It would have been harder if it had not been so late, and if more of the household had been there to see him. As it was, doors opened, candles flared, old voices and young voices asked questions, a baby cried, and then Jack heard a very sharp voice. "Sakes alive, Deacon! You can't have that ruffian here! We shall all be murdered!" "Only till I go and find the constable, Jerusha," said the deacon, pleadingly. "We'll lock him in the back room, and Barney and Pettigrew'll stand guard at the gate, with clubs, while Smith and I are gone." There was another protest, and two more children began to cry, but Jack was led on into his prison-cell. It was a comfortable room, containing a bed and a chair. There was real ingenuity in the way they secured Jack Ogden. They backed a chair against a bedpost and made him sit down, and then they tied the chair, and the wicked young robber in it, to the post. "There!" said Deacon Abrams. "He can't get away now!" and in a moment more Jack heard the key turn in the lock, and he was left in the dark, alone and bound,--a prisoner under a charge of burglary. "I never thought of this thing happening to me," he said to himself, gritting his teeth and squirming on his chair. "It's pretty hard. May be I can get away, though. They thought they pulled the ropes tight, but then--" The hempen fetters really hurt him a little, but it was partly because of the chair. "May be I can kick it out from under me," he said to himself, "and loosen the ropes." Out it came, after a tug, and then Jack could stand up. "I might climb on the bed, now the ropes are loose," he said, "and lift the loops over the post. Then I could crawl out of 'em."