etch slowly removed her eyes from Aunt Amanda, and looked at the
captain steadily.

"There's nought but pigeons and mushrooms and--" said she.

"Good!" said the captain. "Then we will have pigeon pies; one for each;
and well filled, mind you. Now haste; be off."

Mother Ketch turned and hobbled slowly down the passage, and the glimmer
of her candle disappeared.

"Follow me," said Captain Lingo.

The six pirates vanished somewhere in the darkness, and the others
followed Captain Lingo up a winding stair. At the top was a heavy door,
which he unlocked with his key, and locked again on the inside after his
guests had passed through. He then led them down a dark passage-way, and
turning to the right unlocked a door with his key and threw it open.

They were in a large dining-room, on the table of which were numerous
candles, which the captain lighted. In one wall was an opening for a
dumb-waiter for sending up food from the kitchen below. The party seated
themselves at the table, and after a considerable time Ketch entered, a
napkin on his arm, and at the same time the dumb-waiter rose from the
kitchen, and the meal commenced.

Ketch waited on the table. Besides pigeon pies there were mushrooms, a
lettuce salad, hot biscuit, and excellent coffee. Ketch placed the first
pigeon pie before the captain, and Aunt Amanda noticed that he examined
the top of it carefully as he did so. She observed that he examined the
top of each pie carefully before he placed it, until he had put one
before herself, after which he put the others about without looking at
them. She examined the top of her own pie herself, to see what Ketch
could have been looking at. She saw in the center of it a tiny figure
made of very brown dough, and as she looked closer it seemed to have the
shape of a tiny key. She glanced at the other pies, and none of them
bore any mark of this kind.

Everyone set to with a good will, and Aunt Amanda opened her pie. She
remembered Ketch's caution, and she prodded it secretly with her fork
before taking a bite. At the bottom her fork touched something hard. She
immediately began to put the contents of her pie on her plate, and she
did so in such a way as to leave the hard object beneath the rest. In
the course of the meal, she dropped a portion of the pie to the floor,
and stooped to pick it up. As she did so, she managed to take the hard
object from her plate and conceal it in her lap. It was a key.

When the meal