"Then you are willing Tom should go?"

"I am, but not to have him sneak off like a sheep-stealer."

"Three cheers for you, mother!" shouted Thomas, as he threw up the window
at which he had been standing for some ten minutes listening to this
interesting conversation.

"Where have you been, Thomas?" exclaimed the delighted mother.

"Open the door, Jack, and let me in, and I will tell you all about it,"
replied the absentee.

"Come in; the door isn't locked," said John.

He came in; and what he had to tell will interest the reader as well as
his mother and his brother.




CHAPTER VII.

A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE.


Tom Somers was an enterprising young man, as our readers have already
discovered; and when the door of the finished room in the attic of Squire
Pemberton's house was fastened upon him, he was not at all disposed to