Theft at the Red Lion Inn turns a sleeping party of boys into an impromptu watch and arresting party. Its danger emerges gradually: a stranger creeps through the moonlit room with a knife, but Peter van Holp notices him and turns the attempted theft into a capture. The episode moves from imagined fears to a real intruder, then from Peter’s solitary intervention to collective action and the arrival of the authorities.

A Threat in the Sleeping Room

The approach to the robbery is staged through stillness and movement. It is the middle of the night; the fire has gone out, and squares of moonlight slowly cross the floor. The boys sleep badly as lookouts. Jacob Poot has wound himself in the bedclothes until he resembles a chrysalis beside Peter, who is dreaming of skating across bleak icebergs. Against these slow, nearly dreamlike motions, something else travels across the bare, polished floor, quietly and with purpose.

The episode follows a teasing exchange about fear. Ludwig van Holp has disputed the idea of being afraid, while Carl Schummel boasts that he does not know fear and calls Ludwig timid. The unseen movement gives that banter an immediate counterpoint: the threat is not the imagined water torture the boys had discussed, but a man entering their sleeping space. When Peter stirs, the intruder stops. Peter sees a black figure crouched on the floor and watches without speaking as it resumes its approach.

The shape becomes legible only as it draws closer: it is a man crawling on hands and feet. Peter’s first impulse is to call out, but he pauses to assess what is happening. The robber carries a shining knife. When the man turns his head, Peter keeps his eyes closed as if asleep, while continuing to watch him. The intruder lays the knife down and reaches for clothes on the chair beside Peter’s bed. The theft has begun, and Peter waits until the robber is close enough to stop.

Peter’s Counterattack and the Boys’ Response

Peter springs onto the robber’s back with enough force to stun him, then takes the knife. The robber struggles, but Peter sits astride him and keeps him pinned. His response changes the balance of the scene at once: the sleeping boys are no longer merely exposed to danger, because Peter has seized both the intruder and the weapon.

Still holding the robber down, Peter calls for help. He threatens to use the knife if the man moves and shouts for the boys to wake up. The image of Jacob as a chrysalis continues the scene’s comic contrast: even when the others are summoned, the bundled sleeper initially makes little more than a roll. Peter’s danger is real, but the episode preserves the incongruity of boys being roused from sleep into a struggle they had not expected to face.

The boys find a long, stout rope and help restrain the prisoner. Peter directs them to lift the man’s arms and cross his hands behind his back; the others tie his arms and feet with repeated, energetic knots. The captain who had first acted alone now organizes the group, turning a sudden leap into a secure capture. The robber changes his tone once bound, though the available account does not specify what he says. Carl, meanwhile, is not among those helping: when the boys look beneath the beds, he is not there.

The Landlord and the Authorities

A commotion on the stairs brings the inn’s household and lodgers into the room. The landlord arrives carrying a blunderbuss, followed by two or three lodgers. His daughter carries a candle and an upraised frying pan; Carl appears behind them, pale and frightened. Peter points the landlord toward the prisoner. The landlord raises his weapon, the daughter screams, and Jacob at last rolls off the robber’s back. The arrival is noisy and alarmed, but the intruder is already under the boys’ control.

The daughter then brings in a pair of enormous wooden shoes. She identifies them as belonging to the man and explains that he had been put in the next room after the young gentlemen went to bed. Her explanation establishes how close the robber had been to the boys before he entered their room, and why the household had failed to keep the party within easy reach of help. The landlord calls the man a disgrace to the inn and goes for the police.

Within fifteen minutes, two officers arrive. They tell the landlord that he must appear early in the morning with the boys and make his complaint before a magistrate, then take the prisoner away. The capture therefore passes from Peter’s improvised authority, backed by the boys’ rope, into formal custody and a promised legal complaint. The episode ends its immediate danger not with a further fight, but with the robber marched away and the inn’s adults assuming responsibility for what follows.

After the Alarm

The arrest does not keep the boys awake for long. Although the capture might seem enough to prevent sleep, they are too tired to remain alert and soon return to bed. Ludwig and Carl spread their bedding on the floor; one of them has already forgotten the earlier fear and the skating race, while Carl lies awake. The narrator sets the boys’ quick return to sleep against the strain of the encounter: fatigue and an easy conscience carry them back into dreams, while the night’s events linger differently for Carl.

Alone, Carl hears the carillons’ solemn music and the watchman’s clapper marking the quarter hours. He watches moonlight leave the window and red morning light enter, thinking over how foolish he has made himself. The close attention to his solitary wakefulness contrasts with his earlier public pose as a boy who knew no fear. The robbery thus produces two kinds of aftermath: practical safety, secured by the capture and the officers’ intervention, and a private reckoning for Carl, who is left to face the difference between boasting in company and being frightened when danger becomes real.