ld pap this morning, did you,
you little snipe?" he shouted. "Well, you see what you made by it, don't
you?"

"I never tried to make a fool of you," stammered Dan, who had a faint
idea that he understood the situation. "I never in this wide world!"

"Hush your noise when I tell you I know better," yelled Silas; and one
would have thought, by the way he acted and looked, that he was very
angry, instead of very much delighted, at the way things had turned out.
"Here you have been and tramped all over them mountings, and never got a
cent for it, while I have made a clean twenty-five hundred dollars, if I
counted it up right on my fingers; and I reckon I did, 'cause your mam
put in a figger to help me now and then."

"Why, how did it happen?" exclaimed Joe, who, up to this moment, had not
been able to do anything but stand still and look astonished.

He knew that his father had captured one of the robbers without help
from any one, and that was more than fifty other men had been able to
do, with all their weary tramping.

"The way it happened was just this," said Silas, who could not stand in
one place for a single moment. "Hold on there!" he added, turning
fiercely upon his prisoner, who just then moved uneasily upon the bench,
as if he were trying to find a softer spot to sit on. "I've got my eyes
onto you, and you might as--"

"Why, father, he can't get away," Joe interposed. "You've got him tied
up too tight. Why don't you let out that rope a little?"

"'Cause he's worth a pile of money--that's why!" exclaimed Silas; "and I
won't let the rope out not one inch, nuther. You Joe, keep away from
there."

"I really wish you would undo some of this rope," said the prisoner,
who, like Byron's Corsair, seemed to be a mild-mannered man. "I have
been tied up ever since two o'clock, and am numb all over. I couldn't
run a step if I should try."

"Don't you believe a word of that!" exclaimed Silas. "Come away from
there and let that rope be, I tell you."

"Say, father," said Joe, suddenly, "what are you going to do with your
captive? Do you intend to sit up and watch him all night long?"

"I was just a-studying about that when you come up and scared me,"
replied Silas, dropping the butt of his gun to the ground, and leaning
heavily upon the muzzle.

He never could stand alone for any length of time; he always wanted
something to support him.

"What do you think I had better do about it? I don't much like to keep
him