In five minutes the clothes line had been passed around my body from head to feet, and I was almost as stiff as an Egyptian mummy.

“Now catch hold, and we’ll carry him into the tool house,” said Duncan.  “I guess after he has spent twenty-four hours in that place without food or water he’ll be mighty anxious to come to terms.”

I was half dragged and half carried to the tool house and dropped upon the floor.  Then the door was closed upon me, and I was left to my fate.

CHAPTER IV

 The tramp again

I am sure that all will admit that the prospect before me was not a particularly bright one.  I was bound hand and foot and left without food or water.

Yet as I lay upon the hard floor of the tool house I was not so much concerned about myself as I was about matters at Widow Canby’s house.  It would be a hardship to pass the night where I was, to say nothing of how I might be treated when Duncan Woodward and his followers returned.  But in the meantime, how would Kate fare?

I knew that my sister would be greatly alarmed at my continued absence.  She fully expected me to be home long before this.  As near as I could judge it was now an hour or so after noon, and she would have dinner kept warm on the kitchen stove, expecting every minute to see me drive up the lane.

Then again I was worried over the fact that the widow had left the house and her money in my charge.  To be sure, the latter was locked up in her private secretary; but I felt it to be as much in my care as if it had been placed in my shirt bosom or the bottom of my trunk.

I concluded that it was my duty, then, to free myself as quickly as possible from the bonds which the members of the Model Club had placed upon me.  But this idea was more easily conceived than carried out.

In vain I tugged at the clothes line that held my arms and hands fast to my body.  Duncan and the others had done their work well, and the only result of my efforts was to make the cord cut so deep into my flesh that several times I was ready to cry out from pain.

In my attempts I tried to rise to my feet, but found it an impossibility, and only succeeded in bumping my head severely against the wall.

There was no use in calling for help, and though I halloed several times I soon gave it up.  I was fully three-quarters of a mile from any house and half that distance from the road, and who would be likely to hear me so far off?

The afternoon dragged slowly along, and finally the sun went down and the evening shadows crept up.  By this time I was quite hungry and tremendously thirsty.  But with nothing at hand to satisfy the one or allay the other I resolutely put all thoughts of both out of my head.

In the old tool house there had been left several empty barrels, behind which was a quantity of shavings that I found far more comfortable to rest upon than the bare floor.