The worn face of the woman softened as she turned toward the beautiful child, but not with pity.  To that feeling she had long been a stranger.

“I want you to keep him for a few days,” said Pinky, speaking in the woman’s ears.  “I’ll tell you more about it after he’s in bed and asleep.”

“He’s to be kept shut up out of sight, mind,” was Pinky’s injunction, in the conference that followed.  “Not a living soul in the neighborhood must know he’s in the house, for the police will be sharp after him.  I’ll pay you five dollars a week, and put it down in advance.  Give him plenty to eat, and be as good to him as you can, for you see it’s a fat job, and I’ll make it fatter for you if all comes out right.”

The woman was not slow to promise all that Pinky demanded.  The house in which she lived had three rooms, one below and two smaller ones above.  From the room below a stove-pipe went up through the floor into a sheet-iron drum in the small back chamber, and kept it partially heated.  It was arranged that Andy should be made a close prisoner in this room, and kept quiet by fear.  It had only one window, looking out upon the yard, and there was no shed or porch over the door leading into the yard below upon which he could climb out and make his escape.  In order to have things wholly secure the two women, after Andy was asleep, pasted paper over the panes of glass in the lower sash, so that no one could see his face at the window, and fastened the sash down by putting a nail into a gimlet-hole at the top.

“I guess thatt will fix him,” said Pinky, in a tone of satisfaction.  “All you’ve got to do now is to see that he doesn’t make a noise.”

On the next morning Andy was awake by day-dawn.  At first he did not know where he was, but he kept very still, looking around the small room and trying to make out what it all meant.  Soon it came to him, and a vague terror filled his heart.  By his side lay the woman into whose hands Pinky had given him.  She was fast asleep, and her face, as he gazed in fear upon it, was even more repulsive than it had looked on the night before.  His first impulse, after comprehending his situation, was to escape if possible.  Softly and silently he crept out of bed, and made his way to the door.  It was fastened.  He drew the bolt back, when it struck the guard with a sharp click.  In an instant the old woman was sitting up in bed and glaring at him.

“You imp of Satan!” she cried, springing after him with a singular agility for one of her age, and catching him by the arm with a vice-like grip that bruised the tender flesh and left it marked for weeks, drew him back from the door and flung him upon the bed.

“Stay there till I tell you to get up,” she added, with a cruel threat in her voice.  “And mind you, there’s to be no fooling with me.”

The frightened child crept under the bed-clothes, and hid his face beneath them.  Mother Peter did not lie down again, but commenced dressing herself, muttering and grumbling as she did so.