“Then you don’t want to die of starvation just yet?”

“You wouldn’t dare to leave me here, you know you wouldn’t!”

“Why not?  Don’t you deserve it, after the trick you played on Dick and Tom and me?”

“I tell you it’s all a mistake.  Let me out and I will explain everything,” went on Flapp, who was now thoroughly alarmed.

“I’ll let you out—­after I have summoned the town constable.”

“Don’t have me locked up, I beg of you, Sam.  Give me a chance,” pleaded the bully.

“You don’t deserve any chance.  You tried to send me and my brothers to prison, and you have got to suffer for it.”

“Then you won’t let me out?”

“No.”

“I’ll pay you well for it.”

“You haven’t got money enough to pay me, Flapp, and you know it.”

“If you have me locked up I’ll say you helped me in that robbery.”

“Ah, so you admit you did it,” cried Sam, triumphantly.

“No, I admit nothing,” growled the bully.

“Good-bye, then.”

“Where are you going?”

“I am going after the cemetery keeper and the constable,” answered Sam, and walked off without another word.

CHAPTER XI

ATTACKED FROM BEHIND

Lew Flapp watched Sam’s departure with much anxiety.  As my old readers know, he was a coward at heart, and the thought of being put under arrest for the robbery of Aaron Fairchild’s shop made him quake in every limb.

“I must get out of here, I really must,” he told himself, over and over again.

He shook the door violently, but it refused to budge.  Then he tried to reach the catch by putting his hand through the grating, but found it was out of his reach.

“It’s a regular prison cell!” he groaned.  “What a fool I was to come in here!”

He tried to reach the catch by using his stick, but that was also a failure.

“Wonder if I can’t find a bit of wire, or something?” he mused, and struck a match he had in his pocket.

Now it chanced that the widow who had given the new vault to the cemetery association had a horror of allowing supposed dead folks to be buried alive.  As a consequence she had had the vault furnished with an electric button which opened the door from the inside.  It had been stipulated that a light should be placed close to the button, but as yet this was not in place.

By the light of the match Lew Flapp saw the button, and these words over it: 

To Open the Door and Ring the Bell Push This Button.

“Good! that just suits me,” he chuckled to himself, but immediately had something of a chill, thinking that the button might not yet be fixed to work.

With nervous fingers he pushed upon the object.  There was a slight click, and he saw the big iron door of the vault spring ajar.

“The trick is done, and I am free!” he murmured, and sprang to the door.  But here he paused again, to gaze through the grating.  Sam was out of sight and not another soul could be seen.  The coast was clear.