"She's a spunky 'un," remarked Dick, taking the pipe from his mouth.

"Yes," said the woman, "she makes more fuss than I thought she would."

"How did you manage to come it over her family?" asked Dick.

His wife, gave substantially, the same account with which the reader is
already familiar.

"Pretty well done, old woman!" exclaimed Dick, approvingly. "I always
said you was a deep 'un. I always say if Peg can't find out a way to do
a thing it can't be done, no how."

"How about the counterfeit coin?" asked his wife, abruptly.

"They're to supply us with all we can get off, and we are to have one
half of all we succeed in passing."

"That is good," said the woman, thoughtfully. "When this girl Ida gets a
little tamed down, we'll give her some business to do."

"Won't she betray us if she gets caught?"

"We'll manage that, or at least I will. I'll work on her fears so that
she won't any more dare to say a word about us than to cut her own head
off."

Ida sank down on the floor of the closet into which she had been thrust.
Utter darkness was around her, and a darkness as black seemed to hang
over all her prospects of future happiness. She had been snatched in
a moment from parents, or those whom she regarded as such, and from a
comfortable and happy though humble home, to this dismal place. In place
of the kindness and indulgence to which she had been accustomed, she
was now treated with harshness and cruelty. What wonder that her heart
desponded, and her tears of childish sorrow flowed freely?

CHAPTER XI. SUSPENSE.

"It doesn't somehow seem natural," said Mr. Crump, as he took his seat
at the tea-table, "to sit down without Ida. It seems as if half of the
family were gone."

"Just what I've said twenty times to-day," remarked his wife. "Nobody
knows how much a child is to them till they lose it."

"Not lose it, mother," said Jack, who had been sitting in a silence
unusual for him.

"I didn't mean to say that," said Mrs. Crump. "I meant till they were
gone away for a time."

"When you spoke of losing," said Jack, "it made me feel just as Ida
wasn't coming back."

"I don't know how it is," said his mother, thoughtfully, "but that's
just the feeling I've had several times to-day. I've felt just as if
something or other would happen so that Ida wouldn't come back."

"That is only because she has never been away before," said the cooper,
cheerfully. "It isn't best to borrow trouble; we shall