What deed, you ask, could have got me jailed me or otherwise locked up? It occurred, of all places, at Silver Bay, a seven-hundred acre conference center on Lake George. It occurred while the New York Quakers were meeting there, 600 of us. It happened in the middle of the conference week. In the middle of the night.

The YMCA's Silver Bay Center is a sort of poor man's Sagamore. They share the same magnificent lake view, and they have the same kind of centerpiece, a sprawling, gracious inn. But Silver Bay's inn doesn't occupy acres, and you'd also have to take away The Sagamore's lobby palms and giant ferns, its oriental rugs and huge, fresh-cut bouquets, its liveried staff. The Silver Bay lobby has its own quiet elegance, but not much indoor horticulture. And its staff, many of them volunteers, are uniformly dressed in slacks and blue T-shirts.

Other contrasts: Unlike The Sagamore's, Silver Bay's broad lawns also surround a handsome stone chapel, plus a big, brown-shingle building that once would have been dubbed a gospel tabernacle.

The latter has a shingled square tower and a fine bell. Inside, the big auditorium is three stories high, its roof supported by massive open rafters. Just below the rafters, banks of mullioned windows spill sunlight down on the stage and on enough seating, including the balcony, for about a thousand. Acoustics are fine, and singing turns the whole wooden structure into a sounding board. Nothing to match that, I'll bet, at The Sagamore.

And the posh resort can't match Silver Bay's diverse housing, either. It's true that The Sagamore has, besides the luxurious main inn, a set of lodges, some condos, and a half-timbered stone "cottage" with six bedrooms and baths. But that's not quite the YMCA style.

Silver Bay's main inn has well-appointed rooms, to be sure, but none more luxurious than a mid-range hotel might offer. And the other units spread across the acreage are better compared to your memories of summer camp than to Sagamore luxury.

Maybe because of some Welsh blood, I signed up for Silver Bay's cheapest digs. "Overlook" is up in the hills above the inn, set deep in the trees, and with a brook running literally under it. It is Spartan, scruffy. That would suit me fine, I thought. Since I'd be at meetings large and small most of the day, all I needed in a room was a bed, a door to close behind me, and a bathroom down the hall.

Overlook had all that, plus that rustic brook babbling restfully under the floorboards. It's built with 12 abutting two-cot rooms, all opening onto a shared long porch, with toilets and showers down at the porch's far end.

The building is as shabby as a farm shed, but perfectly adequate - even though it sits at the top of two-dozen rough-hewn wooden steps. After hauling suitcase, backpack, books, and sleep-apnea machine up there, I felt like the mother-in-law in the film of "Barefoot in the Park." You remember: When the newlyweds open the door on her first visit to their fifth-floor apartment, the gasping woman, eyes rolling, is propped against the doorframe. "I feel," she says between gasps, "like I've died and gone to heaven - and walked all the way up!"

But you're wondering what all this has to do with my near-incarceration. Here it comes.

I settled into my shared room with Virgil Bunting, a dairy farmer from down near Treadwell. He was the perfect roommate - a lifetime habit of early to bed, early to rise, and a sound sleeper, too. So as not to disturb him, I walked softly, warily, when I had to get up in the night to - well, shuffle down the porch and back.

One night around mid-week, only half awake, I was shuffling back along the dark porch (only one bulb, outside the bathrooms). I paused to look over the railing, down into treetops. "Wouldn't want to tumble headfirst from here," I thought, and turned the doorknob to the room. Not a sound in the pitch black inside. I edged carefully down the aisle between the two bunks, trying to avoid shoes. Successful, I backed myself up to my bunk and got ready to sit.

But someone in the bunk groaned and turned over.

I froze in a half-crouch. First thought: "Wait, can't be me in the bunk. I'm next to it." And then, "Oh, Lord, not my room! I'm next door to myself!" And I was-not in my scruffy room, but the next one, occupied by a momma and two pre-teen daughters. And I was within inches of sitting on momma's head.

But I didn't. And, thank God, though momma had stirred, she didn't awake. With agonizing slowness I straightened up, crept breathless out of the room, stepped into mine. I sank onto my own blessed bunk, trying to get my heart back down in my chest.

For what if I had sat on her head? What if she'd screamed? (Wouldn't you?) What if the daughters had leaped up shrieking, pounding on me? What if the troopers had come? What if I'd been hauled off in handcuffs and pajamas? What if I'd been stood before some country magistrate testy at being dragged out of his own bed? What if there were headlines? (My thudding heart shot back to my throat.) "MAN, 67, INVADES WOMAN'S ROOM, SITS ON HER HEAD." Oh, Lord!

The remaining nights, every time I made my shuffling trek down the porch, I took a pen flashlight with me. On return, I held my breath and shone the beam on the door before I opened it. Then, with fingers over the lens, I let enough light escape to see Virgil's boots next to his bunk, my own next to mine.

And then I shone the light right on my bunk. Just to be sure it was empty.

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. Learn about his book at JimAtwell.com.