through the rest of the house but could not see that anything else had been taken. Nothing of value was gone, that was certain, and she felt less insecure though as deeply puzzled. She decided not to mention the vanished food and the old dog’s strange passivity to her son or her brother.

A week passed over O’Dell’s Point without an unusual incident. Ben and Uncle Jim commenced haying in the early upland fields; and then O’Dell’s Point received its first official visit from the law. Ben brought the horses in at noon, watered them and followed them into the cool and shadowy stable; and there he found Mel Lunt and a stranger smoking cigars. Ben was startled, for he knew Mel Lunt to be the local constable; and the consciousness of being startled drove away his natural shyness and added to his indignation at the glowing cigars. His eyes brightened and his cheeks reddened.

“Young man, what do you know about Richard Sherwood?” asked the stranger, stepping forward and knocking the ash from his cigar.

“We don’t smoke in here, if you don’t mind,” said the overgrown youth. “It isn’t safe.”

“This here’s Mr. Brown from Woodstock, Ben,” said Lunt hastily. “He’s depity sheriff of the county.”

“Mel’s said it. Don’t you worry about the cigars, young man, but tell me what you know, an’ all you know, about Richard Sherwood.”

Ben’s face grew redder and his throat dry.

“I must ask you—again—not to smoke—in this stable,” he replied, in cracked and jerky tones.

“Yer stalling, young feller!” exclaimed the stranger. “Tell me what I’m asking you an’ tell it straight. Yer trying to hide something.”

Jim McAllister stepped into the stable at that moment.

“Sure he’s trying to hide something, Dave Brown,” said McAllister. “He’s trying to hide what he thinks of you for a deputy sheriff—that you’re as ignorant as you are fresh. He’s remembering his manners and trying to hide your want of them. He’s half O’Dell an’ half McAllister; so if you two want to talk in this stable about Richard Sherwood or anything else, I guess you’d better go out first and douse those cigars in a puddle or something.”

“I’m here in the name of the law, Jim McAllister,” said Mr. Brown, uncertainly.

“Same here, only more so,” returned Uncle Jim pleasantly.

 Prev. P 21/90 next