Mr. Foster, if Burgin himself had not saved them all trouble on that
score. Long before the slow processes of country criminal justice could
bring him to actual trial, so many misdeeds were brought home to him,
from here and there, that he gave the matter up, and not only confessed
to the attack on Annie's pocket-book, but to the barn-burning, to which
Dab's cudgelling had provoked him. He made his case so very clear, that
when he finally came before a judge and jury, and pleaded "guilty,"
there was nothing left for them to do but to say just what he was guilty
of, and how long he should "break stone" to pay for it. It was likely to
be a good deal more than "ten years," if he lived out his "time."

All that came to pass some months later, however; and just now the
village had enough to talk about in discussing the peculiar manner of
his capture.

The story of the demijohn leaked out, of course; and, while it did not
rob Dab and Ham of any part of their glory, it was made to do severe
duty in the way of a temperance lecture.

Old Jock, indeed, protested.

"You see, boys," said he, "real good liquor, like that, don't do nobody
no harm. That was the real stuff,--prime old apple-jack 'at I'd had in
my cellar ten year last Christmas; an' it jest toled that feller across
the bay, and captered him, without no manner of diffikilty."

There were some among his auditors who could have testified to a
decidedly different kind of "capture."

One effect of Dab's work on the day of the yachting-trip, including his