g, spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and rushed
out at the door to the great consternation of the company. Mrs. Joe and
Joe ran out and brought him back, and as he sank into his chair he gasped
the one word, "Tar!" I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug! Oh
misery! I knew he would be worse by and by!

"Tar?" cried my sister. "Why how ever could tar come there?" Fortunately
at that moment. Uncle Pumblechook called for hot gin and water, and my
sister had to employ herself actively in getting it. For the time at
least, I was saved. By degrees I became calmer and able to partake of
pudding, and was beginning to think I should get over the day, when my
sister said, "You must finish with such a delicious present of Uncle
Pumblechook's, a savoury pork pie!" She went out to the pantry to get it.
I am not certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror merely in
spirit or in the hearing of the company. I felt that I must run away, so I
released the leg of the table and ran for my life. But at the door, I ran
head foremost into a party of soldiers ringing down the butt-ends of their
muskets on our doorstep. This apparition caused the dinner party to rise
hastily, while Mrs. Joe who was re-entering the kitchen, empty-handed,
stopped short in her lament of "Gracious goodness, gracious me, what's
gone--with the--pie!" and stared at the visitors.

Further acquaintance with the military gentlemen proved that they had not
come for me, as I fully expected, but merely to have a pair of hand-cuffs
mended, which Joe at once proceeded to do, and while the soldiers waited
they stood about the kitchen, and piled their arms in the corner, telling
us that they were on the search for the two convicts who had escaped from
the prison ships. When Joe's job was done, he proposed that some of us go
with them to see the hunt. Only Mr. Wopsle cared to go, and then Joe said
he would take me. To this Mrs. Joe merely remarked: "If you bring the boy
back, with his head blown to bits with a musket, don't look to me to put
it together again!"

The soldiers took a polite leave of the ladies and then we started off,
Joe whispering to me, "I'd give a shilling if they'd cut and run, Pip!"

There was no doubt in my mind that the man I had succoured and the other
one I had seen, were the convicts in question, and as we went on and on,
my heart thumped violently. The man had asked me if I was a deceiving imp.
Would he believe now that I had betrayed h