“I feen him wun and fow fumfin in here!” placing his little hand on one of the lower hoops of the aforesaid molasses-hogshead, to enforce his meaning,—that he had seen Jack run and throw something in there.
This speech being at last understood and partly credited, the hogshead was tipped and the water emptied out; and there, sure enough, was Judge Garty’s office-door key, found just after the lock was forced and the useless ladder was sent crashing against the unlucky window.
But the child could give no information as to the way the fugitive had gone. Neither could Deacon Chatford, who now heard with astonishment how Jack had outwitted the witty constable, and turned the key on the court.
“The rogue!” said the deacon. “He ought not to have taken such a desperate course as that!” Yet somehow he wasn’t sorry. Riding over to the Basin, he had been greatly disturbed in his mind at the thought of Jack’s going to jail, and had seriously questioned whether it was not his duty to offer bail for him. He was a kind-hearted man, as we know; but he had lost faith in the boy’s integrity; and it was a relief to him to learn that the question of bail was settled. “Why, Sellick!” he cried, “what have you been about?”
The lately imprisoned crowd came laughing down the stairway to the street, Sellick laughing with the rest, though rather foolishly. He carefully folded Judge Garty’s warrant, and stuck it into the lining of his hat, remarking, “‘It may come in play some time,’ as the stingy man said when he laid away the bad egg in his cupboard.” Then stooping to pick up a bruised tin cup which lay at the foot of the stairs, “That’s an honest boy, deacon! He paid for the milk, and he left the cup.—This belongs to you, I believe,” handing it to the little fat grocer. “It looks like a good cup, and the milk may have been good milk, but the boy, I’m free to say, didn’t seem to be satisfied with it.—Now what’s to be done, squire? There’s no use crying for the article arter it’s spilt, ye know.”
The bareheaded old man strode past him, frowning prodigiously, and, taking his hat from the post, all wet as it was, put it on.
“Get track of your prisoner and take him!” he said impatiently. “What do ye stand dawdling here for? Somebody must have seen him!”