obeyed, and within two hours from that time no
vestige of the robbers' presence remained in the deserted Old Inn.

If any Sheriff's officer had come there with a search-warrant, he would
have found nothing suspicious; he would have seen only a poor old dumb
woman, busy at her spinning wheel; and if he had questioned her would
only have got smiles and shakes of the head for an answer, or the
exhibitions of coarse country gloves and stockings of her own knitting,
which she would, in dumb-show, beg him to purchase.

Days and weeks passed and the three imprisoned burglars languished in
jail, each in a separate cell.

Bitterly each in his heart complained of the leader that had,
apparently, deserted them in their direst need. And if neither betrayed
him it was probably because they could not do so without deeply
criminating themselves, and for no better motive.

There is said to be "honor among thieves." It is, on the face of it,
untrue; there can be neither honor, confidence nor safety among men
whose profession is crime. The burglars, therefore, had no confidence in
their leader, and secretly and bitterly reproached him for his desertion
of them.

Meanwhile the annual camp meeting season approached. It was rumored that
a camp meeting would be held in the wooded vale below Tip-Top, and soon
this report was confirmed by announcements in all the county papers. And
all who intended to take part in the religious festival or have a tent
on the ground began to prepare provisions--cooking meat and poultry,
baking bread, cakes, pies, etc. And preachers from all parts of the
country were flocking in to the village to be on the spot for the
commencement.

Mrs. Condiment, though a member of another church, loved in her soul the
religious excitement--"the warming up," as she called it, to be had at
the camp meeting! But never in the whole course of her life had she
taken part in one, except so far as riding to the preaching in the
morning and returning home in the evening.

But Capitola, who was as usual in the interval between her adventures,
bored half to death with the monotony of her life at Hurricane Hall--and
praying not against but wishing for--fire, floods or thieves, or
anything to stir her stagnant blood, heard of the camp meeting, and
expressed a wish to have a tent on the camp ground and remain there from
the beginning to the end, to see all that was to be seen; hear all that
was to be heard; feel all that was to be