"Then I'll do it for you," said Peg.

She roughly untied the bonnet, Ida struggling vainly in opposition, and taking this with the shawl, carried them to a closet, in which she placed them, and then, locking the door, deliberately put the key in her pocket.

"There," said she, "I guess you're safe for the present."

"Ain't you ever going to carry me back?" asked Ida, wishing to know the worst.

"Some years hence," said the woman, coolly. "We want you here for the present. Besides, you're not sure that they want to see you back again."

"Not glad to see me?"

"No; how do you know but your father and mother sent you off on purpose?

They've been troubled with you long enough, and now they've bound you apprentice to me till you're eighteen."

"It's a lie," said Ida, firmly. "They didn't send me off, and you're a wicked woman to keep me here."

"Hoity-toity!" said the woman, pausing and looking menacingly at the child. "Have you anything more to say before I whip you?"

"Yes," said Ida, goaded to desperation; "I shall complain of you to the police, and they will put you in jail, and send me home. That is what I will do."

The nurse seized Ida by the arm, and striding with her to the closet already spoken of, unlocked it, and rudely pushing her in, locked the door after her.

"She's a s.p.u.n.ky 'un," remarked d.i.c.k, taking the pipe from his mouth.

"Yes," said the woman, "she makes more fuss than I thought she would."

"How did you manage to come it over her family?" asked d.i.c.k.

His wife, gave substantially, the same account with which the reader is already familiar.

"Pretty well done, old woman!" exclaimed d.i.c.k, approvingly. "I always said you was a deep 'un. I always say if Peg can't find out a way to do a thing it can't be done, no how."

"How about the counterfeit coin?" asked his wife, abruptly.

"They're to supply us with all we can get off, and we are to have one half of all we succeed in pa.s.sing."

"That is good," said the woman, thoughtfully. "When this girl Ida gets a little tamed down, we'll give her some business to do."

"Won't she betray us if she gets caught?"

"We'll manage that, or at least I will. I'll work on her fears so that she won't any more dare to say a word about us than to cut her own head off."

Ida sank down on the floor of the closet into which she had been thrust.

Utter darkness was around her, and a darkness as black seemed to hang over all her prospects of future happiness. She had been s.n.a.t.c.hed in a moment from parents, or those whom she regarded as such, and from a comfortable and happy though humble home, to this dismal place. In place of the kindness and indulgence to which she had been accustomed, she was now treated with harshness and cruelty. What wonder that her heart desponded, and her tears of childish sorrow flowed freely?

CHAPTER XI. SUSPENSE.

"It doesn't somehow seem natural," said Mr. Crump, as he took his seat at the tea-table, "to sit down without Ida. It seems as if half of the family were gone."

"Just what I've said twenty times to-day," remarked his wife. "n.o.body knows how much a child is to them till they lose it."

"Not lose it, mother," said Jack, who had been sitting in a silence unusual for him.

"I didn't mean to say that," said Mrs. Crump. "I meant till they were gone away for a time."

"When you spoke of losing," said Jack, "it made me feel just as Ida wasn't coming back."

"I don't know how it is," said his mother, thoughtfully, "but that's just the feeling I've had several times to-day. I've felt just as if something or other would happen so that Ida wouldn't come back."

"That is only because she has never been away before," said the cooper, cheerfully. "It isn't best to borrow trouble; we shall have enough of it without."

"You never said a truer word, brother," said Rachel, lugubriously. "'Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.' This world is a vale of tears. Folks may try and try to be happy, but that isn't what they're sent here for."

"Now that's where I differ from you," said the cooper, good-humoredly, "just as there are many more pleasant than stormy days, so I believe that there is much more of brightness than shadow in this life of ours, if we would only see it."

"I can't see it," said Rachel, shaking her head very decidedly.

"Perhaps you could if you tried."

"So I do."

"It seems to me, Rachel, you take more pains to look at the clouds than the sun."

"Yes," chimed in Jack; "I've noticed whenever Aunt Rachel takes up the newspaper, she always looks first at the (sic) death's, and next at the fatal accidents and steamboat explosions."

"It's said," said Aunt Rachel, with severe emphasis, "if you should ever be on board a steamboat when it exploded you wouldn't find much to laugh at."

"Yes, I should," said Jack. "I should laugh----"

"What!" said Aunt Rachel, horrified.

"On the other side of my mouth," concluded Jack. "You didn't wait till I had got through the sentence."

"I don't think it proper to make light of such matters."

"Nor I, Aunt Rachel," said Jack, drawing down the corners of his mouth.

"I am willing to confess that this is a serious matter. I should feel as they said the cow did, that was thrown three hundred feet into the air."

"How was that?" inquired his mother.

"A little discouraged," replied Jack.

All laughed except Aunt Rachel, who preserved the same severe composure, and continued to eat the pie upon her plate with the air of one gulping down medicine.