Bill looked dazed for a minute, and then said if it was all the same to us he'd like to have a talk with a lawyer. But Bob Jones broke in and told him “Unless five hundred dollars is paid over to the gang, you will never see Hazelton again.” He looked frightened at that and began to pick at his coat-sleeves, and said he guessed if we didn't mind he'd go and take a little nap now. You never saw such a captive for sleeping up his spare time; he was just naturally cut out to be a prisoner. But we felt kind of sorry and ashamed we had scared him; it was so easy to scare him, and we agreed we'd speak gentle and easy to him after that. At dinner time we waked Bill up and gave him another meal. And he was ready for it; the sight of victuals seemed to take any fright he might have had out of his mind. You never saw such an appetite in all your born days; he ate like he had years of lost time to make up for; and maybe he had. He was having such a good time he began to have his doubts whether it would last, for he said, in a worried kind of way, after dinner: “This here thing of being kidnapped, now, ain't a thing you boys is going to try and charge for, is it? 'Cause if it is them there sharp tricks can't be worked on to me; and if you was to sue me for it you sue a pauper.” After dinner Squint and I went to town on a scouting party. We hung around the streets and listened to the talk that was going on just like a couple of spies would that had entered the enemy's camp in war time. Everybody was wondering what had become of Bill, and gassing about the notices; and it made us feel mighty proud to think that fame had come to ones so young as us, even although it came in disguise so that no one but us knew it. But in the midst of that feeling we heard Hy Williams, the city drayman, saying to a crowd of fellows who were in front of the post office waiting for the mail to be distributed: “The beatingest part of the whole thing is that any one would be fools enough to think that this town or any other town would pay ransom to get back a worthless cuss like Bill Patterson!” It had never struck us like that before. Instead of being famous like we had thought, here we were actually being laughed at again! Squint, he gritted his teeth, and I knew all the rankling that he had done inside of him was as nothing to the rankling that he was doing now. So that night we put up some more notices around town, which read as follows: _n. B.--take notus! we didunt reely Expect money for Old Bill Patterson, we onely done that to show this town Is in Our Power. Take warning and pay Up the next will be a rich one or his child._ --_kidnappers._