Dan seized Joe by the arm, literally forcing him onward, and the two who were ignorant of having committed any crime continued the flight from the officers of the law. CHAPTER VII. AUNT DORCAS. When the three had set out from Mrs. Weber's home, the amateur detective announced that no halt would be made until sunrise. Joe, whose thoughts were with the princess, gave little heed to this statement, if, indeed, he understood it, and Master Plummer had been so terrified by Dan's positive assertion regarding the possibility of an immediate arrest that he had failed to realise the labour which would be required in thus prolonging the flight. Before an hour passed, however, even the detective himself began to think he might have made a rash statement, and Plums, unaccustomed to such violent exercise, was well-nigh exhausted. By this time Joe had come to understand what might be the result if Dan's advice was followed implicitly, and this, together with the knowledge that each moment he was increasing the distance between himself and the princess, served to make him reckless. "Look here, Dan Fernald," he said, coming to a second halt. "Let's talk over this thing before we go any further." "Perhaps you think we can afford to loaf 'round here," the amateur detective said, sternly. "If you fellers want to keep your noses out of jail, you'd best hump yourselves till daylight, an', even then, we won't be far enough away." "We're jest as far now as I'm goin'," and there was that in Joe's voice which told his companion that he would not be persuaded into changing his mind. "What?" Dan screamed. "That's all there is to it. I'll stop here, an' you fellers can keep on if you like." "But, Joe, if there was woods somewhere near I wouldn't say a word. How can you hide where there's so many houses close 'round?" "I don't count on hidin', 'cause I can't afford it. Even if them lawyers get hold of me to-morrer mornin', I'm goin' to stop here." "Right here in the road?" Plums asked, with less anxiety than he would have shown an hour before, when he was not so tired. "Well, I don't mean to say I'll camp down in the road. But you fellers listen to me. If the detectives are out after us, an' I s'pose, of course, they are, we sha'n't be any safer twenty miles away than in this very spot. We've got to stop sometime, an' it may as well be now. I promised to go back to see the princess in two days, an' I'll keep my word." "But where'll you stay all that time?" Dan asked, as if believing this was a question which could not be satisfactorily answered. "I don't know yet; but I'm thinkin' of goin' up to that house," and Joe pointed to a tiny cottage, which in the gloom could be but dimly seen amid a clump of trees. "There's a light in the window, so of course the folks are awake. I'll ask 'em if they haven't got work enough about the place sich as I could do to pay my board over one day, an' if they say no, I'll try at the next house."