“You might go over to the Burtons’, Roy, and get Will to come and stay with us,” Eva suggested.

“And rouse them up at this hour of the night?  It’s getting on to be eleven o’clock.  And it would be a pretty reason to give, wouldn’t it:  ’If you please, Mr. Burton, we invited a convict to spend the night with us, and now we’re afraid.’”

Eva couldn’t resist smiling at Roy’s way of putting it.

Rex yawned heavily.

“I’m awfully sleepy,” he said.

“Yes; and you and Rex were the ones who were to stand guard,” Jess reminded him promptly.

“Well, I’m beginning to agree with Eva now,” Rex returned.  “I haven’t an idea that man intends to harm any of us.  Perhaps there is some mistake after all and he isn’t Martin Blakesley, only somebody that looks like him.”

“I don’t go to bed on any such uncertainty as that,” declared Jess.

“What would we do if we stayed up and we heard him coming down stairs to burglarize the house?” Rex wanted to know.

“If you and Roy weren’t shaking in your boots too much to take aim you might bring him to a halt by pointing Syd’s pistol at his head.”

“I suppose we could ask him to wait first till we ran up to Syd’s bureau drawer and got it,” retorted Rex with fine irony.

“Mercy sakes!  There he is right in the room with the only weapon we’ve got in the house!” and Jess looked really terrified now.  “Why didn’t one of you think to take it out?”

“Why didn’t you think to tell us who Mr. Keeler was before we asked him to stay all night?” Eva retorted.  “You said you knew all the time you had seen him somewhere before.”

“The boys had no business to pick up a stranger and bring him to the house in this way,” Jess replied.  “What do you suppose mother will say when we tell her?”

“You needn’t tell her,” said Rex.

“Needn’t tell her!” exclaimed Jess.  “When she finds half the silver gone and Syd’s pistol missing I suppose we can say that the cat carried them off.”

“Well, I didn’t pick the fellow up,” affirmed Rex.  “It was Roy.  He called to me to come and meet him.”

“And you invited him to the house,” Roy couldn’t resist adding.

“Come,” interposed Eva, “stop quarreling over what is past and decide what we must do in the present.  For my part I can’t think we are in any personal danger.  If the man up stairs is the same one described in the book he has evidently reformed.”

“But remember what it says about his smooth ways,” interjected Jess.  “That is just where he has made his reputation, by his easy way of crawling into people’s confidence.”

“I tell you what to do,” said Roy.  “You and Rex, Eva, go up to bed.  Jess and I will stay up all night and stand watch.”

“But what good will that do you if you haven’t any weapons?” Rex wanted to know.

“We can run, any way,” answered Jess.  “That will be better than lying still to be murdered in our beds.”