"Hotel Calkins" was a brick building which looked pleasantly like a private dwelling, as, in fact, a good half of it was. In this front half dwelt the jailer; in the rear half, separated from the living quarters by a thick wall and heavy doors, was the jail proper. There Farnsworth expected to be led.

   But not at all! Mrs. Calkins ushered him into her own kitchen, where a wash-tub showed what she was doing, where the afternoon sun and sweet September air poured in at the open windows, and where a canary in its cage was singing cheerily.

   Here Farnsworth was much surprised to see Jim, curled up in Mrs. Calkins's own rocking-chair, eating a large red-cheeked apple which he was dividing with a brand-new knife!

   "Squire Tucker told Mark," said Mrs. Calkins, enjoying the joke, "that he guessed James would like our society full as well as that of the prisoners."

   As for Jim, he grinned affably, and took another slice of his apple.

   The awful picture which Miss Ware had drawn of Jim's dreadful isolation and misery and her own indignant sympathy rushed upon

   Farnsworth's mind, and were so comically out of relation with the facts that he sank weakly into the nearest chair and roared.

   "This—is—the way—you go to jail—is it?" he gasped.

   Mrs. Calkins smiled in sympathy, and Jim, half-suspecting that he ought to be offended at this frank mirth, looked sheepishly at the floor.

   Farnsworth recovered himself. "A mighty good friend of yours," he said, "sent me over here."

   "Miss Ware?" asked Jim, much pleased.

   "Yes. She's coming herself right after school, loaded down with things

   to console your desolate prison life, I believe," and Farnsworth had to stop to laugh again. "But she wanted me to start right in and help you out of this, and that's what I'm here for."

   "Thank you," said Jim, embarrassed, but polite. But it struck Farnsworth, as he said afterward, that the boy "shied" a little.

   "Miss Ware says," he went on, "that she doesn't believe you fired that shot, and she wants you to tell me exactly what did happen. Now if we can show that you 

 Prev. P 28/60 next