They managed to creep out from their hiding-place and out through the door before the two ladies had done looking out of the trap-door on to the empty leads. Robert and Jane tiptoed down the stairs--one flight, two flights. Then they looked over the banisters. Horror! a servant was coming up with a loaded scuttle. The children with one consent crept swiftly through the first open door. The room was a study, calm and gentle, manly, with rows of books, a writing-table, and a pair of embroidered slippers warming themselves in the fender. The children hid behind the window-curtains. As they passed the table they saw on it a missionary-box with its bottom label torn off, open and empty. "Oh, how awful!" whispered Jane. "We shall never get away alive." "Hush!" said Robert, not a moment too soon, for there were steps on the stairs, and next instant the two ladies came into the room. They did not see the children, but they saw the empty missionary-box. "I knew it," said one. "Selina, it _was_ a gang. I was certain of it from the first. The children were not mad. They were sent to distract our attention while their confederates robbed the house." "I am afraid you are right," said Selina; "and _where are they now_?" "Downstairs, no doubt, collecting the silver milk-jug and sugar-basin and the punch-ladle that was Uncle Joe's, and Aunt Jerusha's teaspoons. I shall go down." "Oh, don't be so rash and heroic," said Selina. "Amelia, we must call the police from the window. Lock the door. I _will_--I will----" The words ended in a yell as Selina, rushing to the window, came face to face with the hidden children. "Oh, don't!" said Jane; "how can you be so unkind? We _aren't_ burglars, and we haven't any gang, and we didn't open your missionary-box. We opened our own once, but we didn't have to use the money, so our consciences made us put it back and----_Don't!_ Oh, I wish you wouldn't----" Miss Selina had seized Jane and Miss Amelia captured Robert. The children found themselves held fast by strong, slim hands, pink at the wrists and white at the knuckles. "We've got _you_, at any rate," said Miss Amelia. "Selina, your captive is smaller than mine. You open the window at once and call 'Murder!' as loud as you can." Selina obeyed; but when she had opened the window, instead of calling "Murder!" she called "Septimus!" because at that very moment she saw her nephew coming in at the gate. In another minute he had let himself in with his latch-key and had mounted the stairs. As he came into the room Jane and Robert each uttered a shriek of joy so loud and so sudden that the ladies leaped with surprise and nearly let them go. "It's our own clergyman," cried Jane. "Don't you remember us?" asked Robert. "You married our burglar for us--don't you remember?"