the slippery horsehair lounge, and, staring helplessly at the severe portrait of Mrs. Peaslee, done by a lugubrious artist in crayon, wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to collect his scattered faculties.

   "Whew!" he breathed. "Whew!"

    M

    eanwhile

   , at the Edwards house, life had grown suddenly interesting.

   When the report of the gun reached Jim, he had stopped pawing over the apple barrel, and was sitting on the upper step of the staircase at the extreme end of the

   loft, slowly munching an apple and thinking.

   Jim was a healthy, active boy, with no more sense than naturally belongs to a boy of fifteen, and with a lively imagination, which had been most unfortunately overstimulated. Without a mother, and with a father who paid him scant attention, he read whatever he liked, and as a result, his head was full of romantic road-agents delightfully kind to little crippled daughters at home, fierce pirates who supported aged and respectable mothers, and considerate bandits who restored valuable watches when told that they were

   prized on account of tender associations.

   His imagination had been still further fed by certain local legends and happenings, highly colored enough to excite the keenest interest. Ellmington is, as has been said, near the Canadian border. The place abounds in tales of smuggling, and the popular gossip, as gossip everywhere has a pleasing way of doing, associates the names of the most respectable and unlikely people with the disreputable ventures of the smugglers.

   Of course a story of contraband trade is the more striking if the nar

   rator can hint that the judge of probate or the most stern of village deacons might tell a good deal if he were disposed, and there are always persons ready to give this sort of interest to their "yarns."

   In Ellmington lived Jake Farnum, an ex-deputy marshal and an incorrigible liar, about whom gathered the boys, Jim among them, to hear exciting stories of chase and detection, exactly as boys in a seaport town gather about an old sailor to hear tales of pirates 

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