that your friends can release you, I
suppose," said Josh. "We gagged you to prevent you from giving the
alarm."

"You need not have put yourselves to so much trouble, for I haven't a
friend on the island. I came here alone. Let me loose, can't you? I
don't want to be confined here like a felon."

The farmers had been so nicely outwitted by the Crusoe men that they
were very suspicious, and, believing that Johnny's story had been
invented for the occasion, they did not put the least faith in it. They
had caught him prowling about in the vicinity of the potato-patch, and
that, in their eyes, was evidence strong enough to condemn him. Johnny
said every thing he could to induce them to believe that he was really
what he represented himself to be. He told how the burglars had effected
an entrance into the store, described the operation of blowing open the
safe, and even mentioned the fact of having heard somebody shouting for
help while he was standing on the cliff. Then the farmers, for the first
time, became interested.

"Perhaps it's Jed," said Bill. "He is our brother," he added, in answer
to an inquiring look from Johnny. "He went out with us after the fellows
who cut down the cellar door, and he hasn't come back yet. We had better
go down there, for he may have fallen over the cliff."

"You will take me with you, will you not?" inquired Johnny.

"No, I guess not; we don't think it would be safe. You see, the way you
fellows got those two prisoners out of the cellar makes us think we
can't be too careful of you. We'll leave you here, and for fear that you
might escape, or be rescued while we are gone, we'll take you up stairs
and tie you fast to something."

Johnny protested loudly against this arrangement, but his words fell
upon deaf ears, and he was obliged to submit to his captors, who
conducted him into the garret and bound him to the chimney, which came
up through the middle of the floor.

"There," said Josh, "I'd like to see your friends find you now. You'll
be likely to stay here until we come back, unless you can pull the
chimney down, and I don't think you are strong enough to do that."

Johnny was astonished at the care exhibited by the farmers in providing
for his safe-keeping, and it led him to the conclusion that Tom and his
band had been doing something desperate. He was impatient to learn the
full particulars of the robbery of the potato-patch, and the rescue of
the prisoners, but he was much m