The Corner House Girls' Odd Find / Where they made it, and What the Strange Discovery led to

It must be confessed that Ruth Kenway had worked herself into a fever of excitement. It was the result of the repressed anxiety she had so long endured regarding this strange and wonderful find of Agnes’ in the old Corner House garret.

Neale was very pale now. He was usually slow to anger, and his friends, the Corner House girls, had never seen him moved so deeply before.

“I did think the bonds might be worth something,” Neale said, at last, and hoarsely. “I told Aggie so.”

“But the money?” cried Ruth.

“You say it’s good,” the boy returned. “You can believe that’s so if you want to. I didn’t think it was when I took the book.”

“I tell you Mr. Crouch, at the bank, said it was perfectly good. See here!” cried Ruth, desperately.

She ran for her purse that lay on the sewing-machine table. She opened it and drew forth the folded ten dollar bill. With it came the other bill she had put away.

“I showed him this!” Ruth began, when Agnes stooped to pick up the other.

“What’s this?” the second sister asked.

“Why—why that’s the one Mr. Howbridge gave me. I haven’t needed to break it.”

“And you had ’em both together?” demanded Agnes, shrewdly.

“Yes.”

“Which one did you show Mr. Crouch then?”

The question stunned Ruth for the moment. She unfolded the bill she had taken out of the purse. It was quite a new silver certificate. Agnes unfolded the other. It was an old-style United States banknote, dated long before the girls’ parents were born.

Neale, as well as the Kenway sisters, saw the significance of the discovery. The boy turned his face aside quickly and so hid the smile that automatically wreathed his lips.

“Why—why!” gasped Agnes, “if you showed Mr. Crouch that bill, of course he said it was a good one. But how about this?”

Ruth turned like a flash on Neale again. “What do you know about the money in the book? Isn’t it good?” she demanded. “I believe you’ve found out.”

“Well! what if I have?” and one would hardly recognize Neale O’Neil’s pleasant voice in the snarling tone that now answered the oldest Corner House girl.

“Oh, Neale! is it?” cried Agnes.

But Neale gave her no reply. He was still glaring at Ruth whose expression of her doubt of his honesty had rasped the boy’s temper till he fairly raged.

“If you want to find out anything about that stuff in the old book, you can do it yourself. I won’t tell you. I’m through with the whole business,” declared Neale.

“But—but where’s the book?” asked Ruth, in rather a weak voice now.

“Oh, I brought it back,” snapped Neale. “You’ll find it outside on the porch—in my bag. That’s all I carried in the old thing, anyway. You can have it.”

He marched to the door and jerked it open. Agnes tried to call after him, but could not.

Neale banged to the door behind him and tramped down the hall. They heard him open the outer door and slam that. Then he thumped down the steps and made for the Willow Street gate.

“Oh, Ruth! what have you done?” gasped Agnes, wringing her hands. “Poor Neale!”

“I want that album!” exclaimed Ruth, jumping up.

“It—it can’t be worth anything—that money,” murmured Agnes, but followed her sister.

“It is good money. I’m sure of it!” snapped Ruth.

She hurried to the porch. There was Neale’s old bag in the dark corner. Ruth pounced upon it.

“Oh, Ruth!” cried Agnes. “It’s never there.”

“Yes, it is. He didn’t stop when he went out. Of course it’s here!”

Ruth had brought the satchel into the lighted hall and opened it. She turned it upside down and shook it.

But nothing shook out—not a thing. The bag was empty. The old album Agnes had found in the garret, and which had caused all their worry and trouble, had disappeared from Neale’s satchel.

CHAPTER XVIII—WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT

Coming downstairs and through the dining room, where the gas-logs blazed cheerfully on the hearth, Dot found Sandyface, the “grandmother” cat, crouching close before the blaze, her forepaws tucked in, and expressing her satisfaction at the warmth and comfort in a manner very plain to be heard.

“Mercy me!” ejaculated the smallest Corner House girl. “Sandyface! you sound just as though you were beginning to boil! Oh!”

For just then the door from the rear hall opened quickly and startled her. The strange girl—the circus girl—who had so interested Dot and Tess, to say nothing of the rest of the family, popped in.

“Oh!” repeated Dot. “How you frightened me.”

Barnabetta stood with her back against the door. One might have thought that the appearance of Dot, had been quite as unexpected and had frightened her.

She seemed breathless, too, as though she had been running. But of course she had not been running. Where should she have run to on such a cold night? And there was no snow on her shoes. Besides, she wore no wrap.

“Did—did I frighten you, little girl?” Barnabetta said. “I am sorry, I did not mean to.”

She had both hands behind her and stood against the door in a most awkward position.

“I was afraid you had gone to bed,” prattled on Dot, stroking Sandyface. “Ruthie said she s’posed you had. But I’m glad you hadn’t. I wanted to ask you something.”

“Did—did you?” returned Barnabetta. She seemed to be listening all the time—as though something was going on in the hall that frightened her.

“Yes,” Dot went on placidly. “You know, we’ve been to a circus once.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. And Tess and I was awful int’rested in it. We—we liked the ladies and gentlemans that rode on the horses around the ring, and was on the trapezers, too. And they looked beau-tiful in those spangles, and velvets, and all.

“I s’pose those were their best clo’es, weren’t they—their real, Sunday-go-to-meeting frocks?”

“I—I guess they were,” admitted Barnabetta.

“You wear your best clo’es when you go up on the trapezers, don’t you?”

“The fanciest I’ve got,” admitted the circus girl.

“Well! Mustn’t they look funny all going to church that way—the ladies in those short, fluffy skirts, and the gentlemans in such tight pants! My!” gasped Dot. “Couldn’t you tell us, please, what they do in circuses when they travel?”

“Why—yes,” said Barnabetta. “I’ll tell you.”

“Will you sit right down here and tell us?”

“Why—yes.”

“Oh, wait! I’ll run and fetch Tess!” exclaimed the generous Dot. “I know she will want to hear, too,” and she scampered out of the room so swiftly that she startled Sandyface, who flew through the door before her.

Barnabetta was left alone in the dining room. There was a closet with a small door right beside the fireplace. When Dot returned with Tess the circus girl was leaning her back against that closet door, instead of against the hall door.

“Oh, do come and sit down,” urged Dot, eagerly, drawing an armchair to the hearth.

Barnabetta did so. Tess and Dot each brought a hassock, one on either side of the older girl. Barnabetta had a softer side to her nature than the side she had displayed to Agnes Kenway. There were little folk at the circus, who traveled with their parents with the show, who loved Barnabetta Scruggs.

A little later Agnes, pale of face and with traces of tears, came into the room. She and Ruth had hunted high and low for the lost album Neale O’Neil had left in his satchel on the side porch.

Even Ruth admitted Neale had not halted there, when he went out so angrily, long enough to take the album away. And both girls had seen him drop the heavy bag in that dark corner when he came in with Tess.

Somebody had removed the album. Nor was it ridiculous to suppose that the “somebody” who had done this knew very well what the book contained.

“Oh, we’ve been robbed! robbed!” Ruth had cried, rocking herself back and forth in her chair in the sitting room. “What ever shall we do? What shall I say to Mr. Howbridge?”

“I don’t care a thing about him,” declared Agnes, recklessly. “But think of all that money—if it is money—”

“I tell you it is.”

“But you don’t know for sure,” Agnes retorted. “Maybe you showed Mr. Crouch the wrong bill.”

“No. I’ve felt all the time,” Ruth said despairingly, “that we really had a great fortune in our hands. How it came to be hidden in our garret, I don’t know. Whom it really belongs to I don’t know.”

“Us! We found it!” sobbed Agnes.

“No. We cannot claim it. At least, not until we have searched for the rightful owners. But Mr. Howbridge will tell us.”

“Oh! mercy me, Ruthie Kenway!” cried Agnes. “What’s the use of talking? It’s go-o-one!”

“I don’t know who—”

“You can’t blame Neale now!” flared up Agnes. “You’ve made him mad, too. He’ll never forgive us.”

“Well! What business had he to carry off that book?” demanded Ruth. “He can be mad if he wants to be. If he hadn’t carried it away there would have been no trouble at all.”

“Oh, Ruthie! It isn’t his fault that somebody has stolen it now,” repeated Agnes.

“Why isn’t it?”

“How could it be?”

“Like enough the foolish boy showed all that money to somebody, and he has been followed right here to the house by the robber.”

Agnes gasped. Then she sat back in her chair and stared at her sister. Suddenly, with an inarticulate cry, she arose and dashed upstairs.

Although she had not asked, Agnes supposed the circus girl had retired immediately after dinner. It was still early in the evening, and Agnes and Ruth had had no private conversation regarding Barnabetta and her father. Neale’s arrival had driven that out of both their minds.

But into Agnes’ brain now came the thought that Barnabetta had seen the old album full of money and bonds while Neale was at the winter quarters of the circus.

“Oh, dear me! Can she be so very, very wicked?” thought Agnes. “They are so desperately in need. And such an amount of money is an awful temptation—that is, it would be a temptation if it were money!”

For despite all that Ruth said, Agnes could not believe that the wonderful contents of the old album was bona fide money and bonds.

The thought, however, that Barnabetta might be tempted to steal from those who had been kind to her, troubled Agnes exceedingly. She did not want to say anything to Ruth about her suspicions of the circus girl yet. Why make her sister suspicious, too, unless she was sure of her evidence?

Agnes listened at the door of Barnabetta’s room. There was no sound in there and she finally turned the knob softly and pushed open the door a crack. The lighted room was revealed; but there was no sign of occupancy save the shabby boy’s clothing folded on a chair. The bed had not been touched.

Was the circus girl with her father? Or had she left the house on some errand?

Agnes crept to the other door and put her ear to the panel. At first she heard nothing. Then came a murmur, as of voices in low conversation. Were the circus people talking? Had Barnabetta really gained possession of the book, and were she and her father examining it?

Then Agnes suddenly fell to giggling; for what she actually heard was Mr. Asa Scruggs’ rhythmic snoring.

“She surely isn’t there,” decided Agnes, creeping away down the hall again. “He’s sound asleep. If Barnabetta’s up to any mischief—if she’s taken that album—she can’t be in there with it.”

It was immediately following this decision that Agnes, returning downstairs by the front way, heard voices in the dining room. She looked in to see Barnabetta sitting with Tess and Dot before the fire, telling the little girls stories of circus life.

Agnes dodged out of there. She had seen enough, she thought, to convince any one that the circus girl was not guilty.

“Where’d you go to?” demanded Ruth, when her sister returned to the sitting room.

“I went to see where that Barnabetta Scruggs was,” confessed Agnes.

“Oh, my! I did not think of them.” Ruth said.

“Well, she’s all right. She’s in the dining room telling Tess and Dot stories. It certainly could not be Barnabetta. Why! we’d have heard her go through the hall and out upon the porch.”

“Why! She doesn’t know anything about the album,” retorted Ruth. “I tell you it’s been stolen by somebody who followed Neale here to the house.”

“Well, surely that couldn’t be Barnabetta,” admitted Agnes; “for she got here first.”

“That is true,” Ruth agreed. “No. Somebody followed that foolish boy—perhaps away from Tiverton. And to think of his throwing down a satchel of money on the porch in that careless way!”

“Oh, but Ruthie! that proves Neale doesn’t believe it is good money,” Agnes said eagerly. “Else he wouldn’t have left it out there. Of course he has found out that it is all counterfeit.”

“You never can tell what a foolish boy will do,” retorted Ruth, tossing her head.

“Shall—shall we tell the police we’ve been robbed?” hesitated Agnes.

“Why should we tell them, I’d like to know?” demanded Ruth, shortly. “What should we tell them? That we’ve lost a hundred thousand dollars that doesn’t belong to us?”

“Oh, mercy!”

“I’d be afraid to,” confessed the troubled Ruth. “You don’t know what they might do to us for losing it.”

“Oh, dear, Ruthie! that sounds awful,” murmured Agnes.

The two girls were in much vexation of spirit, and quite uncertain what to do. The emergency called for wisdom beyond that which they possessed. Nor did they know anybody at hand with whom they might confer regarding the catastrophe.

Agnes wanted to run after Neale and ask his opinion. He might know, or at least suspect, who it was that had taken the album out of the satchel.

But Ruth would not hear of taking Neale into their affairs further. She was quite put out with their boy friend. And Agnes, from past experience, knew that when Ruth was in this present mood it was no use to argue with her.

They spent a very unhappy evening indeed. The two oldest Corner House girls, that is. As for Tess and Dot, they reveled till bedtime in a new and wonderful world—the circus world.

They listened to Barnabetta tell of long journeys through the country, when the big animals, like the camels and the elephants, marched by night, and the great cages and pole-wagons and tent-wagons, rumbled over the roads from one “stand” to another. Of adventures on the way. Of accidents when wagons broke down, or got into sloughs. Sometimes cages burst open when the accidents occurred, and some of the animals got out.

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Tess, so excited that she could scarcely sit still. “To think of lions, and tigers, and panthers running loose!”

“What’s a ‘panther,’ sister?” queried Dot, puzzled. “Are panthers dangerous?”

“Very,” responded Tess, wisely. “Of course.”

“Why—why, I didn’t s’pose that was so,” murmured Dot.

“For pity’s sake!” Tess exclaimed, exasperated. “What do you s’pose a panther is, anyway, Dot Kenway?”

“Why—why,” stammered the smallest Corner House girl, “I—I thought a panther was a man who made pants.”

“Oh, goodness to gracious, Miss Barnabetta! Did you ever hear of such a child?” demanded Tess, hopelessly. “She never will learn the English language!”

Ruth came all too quickly to remind the little girls that it was bedtime. Although much troubled, the oldest Corner House girl did not forget their guests’ comfort.

Mr. Scruggs was settled for the night and Barnabetta was sure he would not need anything before morning. She accepted a cup of hot cocoa and a biscuit herself and took them up stairs with her. Agnes did not appear again, and Barnabetta did not know that she was being watched by a pair of troubled blue eyes from the darker end of the hall.

Agnes had Barnabetta very much in her mind. She and Ruth agreed to say nothing in their own room about the mysterious disappearance of the album. The door was open into the children’s room and it was notorious that “little pitchers have big ears.”

After they were in bed, Agnes still lay and thought about Barnabetta. Was it possible that the circus girl had obtained possession of the mysterious old album?

It seemed ridiculous to believe such a thing. Surely she had not removed it to her room, for Agnes had been there and had looked for it. Barnabetta had been quietly telling stories to Tess and Dot downstairs all the evening.

Yet, the very fact that the circus girl was downstairs troubled Agnes. Suppose she had come down while Neale and Ruth and she, Agnes, were talking so excitedly about the odd find that had been made in the garret? Suppose Barnabetta had heard most of their talk?

“Easy enough for her to have slipped out of the door and grabbed that old book,” murmured Agnes. “But then—what did she do with it? Oh, dear me! How awful of me to suspect her of such wickedness.”

In the midst of her ruminations she heard a doorlatch click. The house had long since become still. It was very near midnight.

Agnes sat up in bed and strained her ears to catch the next sound. But there seemed to be no further movement. Had somebody left one of the bedrooms, or was it a draught that had shaken the door?

The uncertainty of this got upon the girl’s nerves. Somebody might be creeping downstairs. Suppose it were Barnabetta?

“What would she go down again for?” Agnes asked herself.

Yet even as she thought this and how ridiculous it was, she crept out of bed. Ruth was sound asleep. Nobody heard Agnes as she felt around with her bare feet and got them into her fleece-lined bedroom slippers. Then, wrapping her robe about her, she tied the cord and found her bedroom candle.

She lit this and went out into the hall, the door being open. As she came noiselessly to the top of the main stairway she saw the reflection of another candle on the ceiling above the stairwell—a bobbing reflection that showed somebody was moving slowly down the lower flight.

Agnes, not daring to breathe audibly, shielded her own light with her free hand, and hastened to peer over the balustrade.

CHAPTER XIX—THE KEY TO THE CLOSET

Hiding her candle so that it should not shine through the crack of the door, Agnes pushed the portal open again with her free hand. There was a glimmer of light ahead.

The dining room was a large apartment. The candle in the hand of the unknown made only a blur of light at the far end of the room.

What was the bearer of the candle about? At first Agnes could not discover. The candle was near the door which opened into the hall near the side porch door. Through that hall one could easily reach the dark corner where Neale O’Neil had thrown his satchel when he arrived at the old Corner House that evening.

A number of thoughts were buzzing in Agnes Kenway’s brain. In spite of herself she was unable to disconnect thought of Barnabetta Scruggs and the missing book of money and bonds. It might be that the circus girl had descended the stairs and, listening at the sitting room door while Neale was there, had heard what he said about the old book; and so slipped out and stolen the album either just before Neale flung himself out of the house, or just afterward. There would have been time to do so in either case.

If Barnabetta knew nothing about the missing album, why was she creeping about the house at this unearthly hour? The question seemed, to Agnes’ mind, to be unanswerable save as the answer fitted the above probabilities.

“But I don’t really know that this is Barnabetta,” Agnes’ excusing self objected.

She did not wish it to be the circus girl. As much as she desired to know what had become of the album, she did not wish to find it in Barnabetta Scruggs’ possession.

The candle in the hand of the figure Agnes followed was suddenly raised higher. The Corner House girl jumped and almost uttered a sharp exclamation aloud. Why! Barnabetta was not as tall as that!

This ghostly visitor to the dining room was an adult. She saw its flowing robe now. The candle, held so high, threw the shadow of the head on the wall in sharp relief.

“Her hair’s done up in a ‘pug’ behind,” gasped Agnes. “Who can it be? Mrs. MacCall, or—or Aunt Sarah?”

The mysterious person was at the closet built into the brickwork of the chimney-piece, not at the hall door. That closet was a catch-all for all manner of odds and ends. There were shelves up high, as well as a deep bin underneath.

Agnes felt she must know who the person was who was rummaging in the closet, and what she was about. She softly extinguished her own candle, and set it down on the floor in the hall. Then she pushed the door open wider and ventured into the dining room.

“Aunt Sarah!”

Agnes did not utter this ejaculation aloud; but she was completely surprised.

The grim looking old woman was fumbling on the top shelf of the cupboard, and she was muttering to herself in a most exasperated tone.

“Those dratted young ones are into everything!” was Aunt Sarah’s complaint. “A body can’t find a thing put away as it should be.”

She stepped back from the cupboard then. She closed the door with an angry snap, and then stood, meditating.

Agnes had darted around the big table and crouched down. Aunt Sarah half turned from the closet door; then she turned back again.

Was the old lady asleep or awake? Agnes did not know that Aunt Sarah ever walked in her sleep. But she knew that somnambulists did very strange things, and, of course, Aunt Sarah might be a sleep-walker.

Aunt Sarah Maltby proceeded to do a very strange thing now. There was a heavy brass key in the lock of the cupboard door. The old lady suddenly turned the key, locked the door, withdrew the key, and, clutching it tightly in her hand, marched back toward the front hall door.

It was just at this moment that Agnes Kenway was treated to a second surprise. She suddenly realized that there was a third person in the room!

It was because of no movement upon the part of the mysterious third person that Agnes made this exciting discovery. But she heard a quick sigh, or intake of breath, somewhere at the lower end of the room near the pantry door. She thought of Tom Jonah first of all; but then remembered that the old dog had gone out at bedtime and had not come in again.

Most exciting thoughts raced through Agnes Kenway’s brain. She had followed Aunt Sarah downstairs and into the dining room. But had Aunt Sarah followed somebody else here, at midnight?

“What under the sun is going on?” was Agnes’ muttered comment. “My goodness! I wish Ruth were here. Or Neale!”

The Corner House girl felt very much disturbed indeed. She did not believe in ghosts; but she did believe in burglars!

At that moment all thought of Barnabetta Scruggs went out of Agnes’ troubled mind. Aunt Sarah passed out of the dining room door into the front hall and closed the door carefully behind her. This left the great room in perfect darkness.

Agnes was actually trembling with excitement and fear. She had not thought to be afraid at all until she heard that mysterious sigh. The fact that she had no means of identifying the midnight marauder increased her fright.

There it was again—a short intake of breath! Somebody was surely hiding at the lower end of the room. Agnes must have come into the room so quietly that the unknown person did not apprehend her presence.

Fearful as she was, Agnes did not move. If her presence was not already discovered she had no intention whatever of revealing it to the unknown.

There was suddenly a faint sound, as of a clumsily shod foot striking against one of the heavy chairs. Agnes could see nothing at first; but she seemed actually to feel the moving presence at the lower end of the room.

There are degrees of darkness just as there are of light. Something darker—or more solid—than the atmosphere of the dining room, passed across the line of Agnes’ vision.

The moving figure approached the cupboard in the chimney-place. Agnes knew that the unknown person stood just where Aunt Sarah had stood shortly before.

A tentative hand shook the closet door gently. It rattled; but the old lock was a strong one. Nothing less than a crowbar or a burglar’s jimmy could have forced that door.

Evidently the mysterious marauder was not armed with either of these implements. Agnes heard a sigh that was almost a sob! Then she knew that the disappointed unknown had turned hopelessly from the closet door.

Whatever it was this person wanted, Aunt Sarah had locked it up in the cupboard and carried away the key.

Agnes, crouching beyond the table, realized that the visitor glided to the door leading into the back hall. The door was opened. For a single instant the figure was partially revealed in outline to the girl’s straining vision.

It was the figure of a man!

Then the door closed on its exit. Agnes sprang to her feet. Had the unknown one not closed the door, he must have heard her then, for Agnes was too excited by her last discovery to be at all careful.

“A man! A man in the house!” thought the terrified girl. And then, remarking a single peculiarity of the mysterious figure, she whispered: “Not a man, but a boy. Goodness! who can it be?”

Quick as a flash Agnes Kenway ran to the door leading into the front hall, by which she had entered. She opened it and slipped into the hall. Neglecting her candle which she had placed on the floor for safety, she crept back toward the darker end of the hall.

There was an “elbow” in the passage behind the front stairway and she could not see beyond this. But she heard a sound—the unmistakable sound of a bolt being drawn.

Was the mysterious visitor at the porch door? Was he leaving the house? And how had he got in?

Agnes waited breathlessly for some further noise. But there was none.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. The seconds were being ticked off in a ghostly fashion by the tall clock behind her.

Agnes crouched in the corner and trembled. Usually she was brave; but the experiences of the last half hour had gotten upon the girl’s nerves.

At last she could remain quiet no longer. She stole to the rear of the dark hall—past the sitting room door and beyond leading into the dining room, and through which the boy had passed.

This end of the passage was comparatively narrow. Agnes could be sure that nobody was hiding here, for some light filtered down the back stairway from the floor above.

Before her was the door of the porch. She fumbled for the knob, and found it. She opened the door easily. This was the bolt she had heard drawn.

Here Agnes suffered the very worst scare of the whole adventure. Something cold and wet was thrust against her hand!

She almost screamed aloud. She would have screamed, only the fright of it made her lose her voice. She swung there, clinging to the doorknob, about to fall fainting to the floor, when a bulky object pushed by her and she heard Tom Jonah’s whine.

“Oh! You dear, old, foolish, mean, silly thing!” gasped Agnes. “How you scared me. I’ll never forgive you, Tom Jonah! But I’m so glad it’s only you.”

This she whispered, while she hugged the shaggy dog. Tom Jonah had evidently found it too cold for comfort outside the house, and hearing her at the door had come to beg entrance for the night.

She let him into the kitchen and then, as she went back to the door, she was suddenly smitten with this thought:

“If that boy went out of that door, Tom Jonah must have known him!”

The old dog had known him so well that he made no objection to his being about the old Corner House. There was but one boy in the world whom Tom Jonah would allow to do such a thing. That was Neale O’Neil.

The thought gave Agnes Kenway a feeling of dire dismay. She could not understand it. She could not believe it.

Yet she was sure the boy had gone out by this door. But how he had first got into the house was a mystery beyond her divination.

At once she shot the bolt again. Once out, the youthful marauder, whoever he was, should stay out, as far as this particular means of entrance was concerned.

“It couldn’t be a real burglar,” murmured Agnes, quiveringly. “Oh, Neale! I wouldn’t have thought it of you!

“And Aunt Sarah must have scared him when he was at that closet. But, goodness me! what would Neale O’Neil want in that old closet? Nothing there much but medicines on the top shelf and old books and papers. I—don’t see—

“Could it be a really, truly burglar, after all? Not one like Dot’s plumber, but a real one? And why didn’t Tom Jonah bark? Oh, goodness! suppose he hasn’t gone out after all?

“Oh! I want to go to bed and cover my head up with blankets!” gasped Agnes. “I want to tell Ruth—but I daren’t! Maybe I ought to call everybody and make a search for the burglar. But suppose it should be Neale?”

So she stole up to bed, shaking with nervous dread, yet feeling as though she ought, somehow, to be congratulated. Yet when she had slipped off her robe and was in bed again, two separate and important thoughts assailed her:

Had Barnabetta Scruggs been out of her room? And what had Aunt Sarah Maltby done with the key to the dining room closet?

CHAPTER XX—LEMUEL ADEN’S DIARY

Agnes did not want to discuss this with her sister. She was quite as puzzled as was Ruth over the disappearance of the old album in which had been pasted the bonds and money; only she could not bring herself to believe, as Ruth did, that the bonds and money were good.

She wondered if Neale O’Neil had found the answer to this problem while he was in Tiverton. Then she winced when she thought of Neale. He did not appear at the old Corner House on this Sunday morning, as he usually did.

They must wait until Monday for Ruth to go to the bank again and have the right ten dollar bill examined. She admitted that she might have shown the new banknote instead of the old one to Mr. Crouch.

“Though lots of good it will do us to know for certain whether the money was good and legal tender or not, now that it has been stolen,” Ruth grieved.

Barnabetta appeared at breakfast and Agnes noticed that the circus girl’s eyes were red and her manner much subdued.

The Corner House family prepared for church much as usual. Aunt Sarah always made most of her preparations—even to the filling of her dress pocket with a handful of peppermint lozenges—the night before.

Time was when the Kenway sisters had to scrimp and save to find the five pennies weekly to purchase Aunt Sarah’s supply of peppermints; now they were bought in quantity and—

“I don’t see why you young ones can’t leave ’em alone,” said the old lady, severely, as she swept down into the hall in her best silk dress and popped the first lozenge of the day into her mouth.

“I forgot ’em last night till I’d got to bed, and when I come down here for ’em, I declare I couldn’t scurce find ’em in that cupboard. But I got ’em locked away now an’ I guess you won’t be so free with ’em.”

At this Agnes was attacked by “a fit of the giggles,” as Aunt Sarah expressed it. But the girl was not laughing at Aunt Sarah. Her thought was:

“My goodness me! was that what the burglar was after—Aunt Sarah’s peppermints?” But she missed seeing Barnabetta’s face at this juncture.

Dot cried: “Oh, my, Miss Barnabetta! don’t you feel well a-tall this morning?”

“Oh, yes, my dear, I am quite well,” said the circus girl, hastily.

Tess said doubtfully: “I—I hope we didn’t tire you last night asking for stories?”

“No, indeed.”

“But you just did look as though you were going to faint,” said Dot.

“There, there,” said Mrs. MacCall. “Appearances aren’t everything. The looks of a toad don’t tell how far he’s goin’ to hop.”

“No-o,” agreed Tess. “And, anyway, toads are very useful animals, even if they are so very ugly.”

Barnabetta had the two little girls again, one on either side of her, before the fire. She had plainly become their fast friend.

Barnabetta said, more cheerfully: “Toads are not always ugly. Didn’t you ever see a toad early in the mornin’—when the grass and everything is all sparklin’ with dew? Oh! I must tell you a story about that.”

“Do, Miss Barnabetta,” breathed Tess, eagerly.

“Oh! that will be lovely!” murmured Dot.

“Once upon a time a little brown toad—a very warty toad—lived in a little house he had scooped for himself in the dirt right under a rose tree. He was a very sensible, hard-workin’ toad, only he grieved because he was so ugly.

“He never would have known he was so ugly, for he had no mirror in his house, if it hadn’t been for the rose. But lookin’ up at the buddin’ rose, he saw how beautiful she was and knew that in contrast he was the very ugliest beast that moved upon the earth.”

“The poor thing!” murmured Tess, the tender-hearted.

“He near about worshipped that rose,” pursued Barnabetta, her own eyes brighter as the children followed her story breathlessly. “Every day he watched her unfold her petals more and more. He caught all the bugs and flies and ugly grubs he could to keep them from comin’ at the rose and doin’ her harm.

“Then came the mornin’,” said Barnabetta, “when the rose was fully unfolded. The dew overnight had bejeweled each petal and when the first rays of the sun hurried to kiss her, the dewdrops sparkled like all manner of gems and precious stones.

“‘Oh, see!’ sighed the poor toad, ‘how beautiful is the rose and how ugly I am.’

“But the rose heard him and she looked kindly down upon the poor toad. She knew how faithfully he had guarded her from the creepin’ and flyin’ things that would have spoiled her beauty.

“‘Come here,’ she said to the toad, bendin’ down upon her stalk to see him better. And the toad hopped close beneath her. ‘Come here,’ said the rose, ‘and I will make you, too, beautiful.’

“And then she called to the mornin’ breeze, ‘Shake me!’ and the breeze did so—ever so gently—and all the sparklin’, twinklin’ precious gems of dewdrops shook off the rose and fell upon the toad in a shower.

“And at once,” laughed Barnabetta, “the toad was covered with diamonds, and spangles, and glistenin’ drops of dew in which the sun was reflected, till the toad appeared to be encased in an armor of silver, trimmed with jewels, and all the creatures in the garden cried:

“‘Oh! how beautiful is the toad!’”

Agnes listened with delight to this fantasy from the trapeze performer. This gentle girl, telling pretty tales to Tess and Dot, was quite another person from “Barney” Scruggs, who had been tramping in boy’s clothing with the old clown.

“She can’t be wicked enough to have stolen that scrap-book,” Agnes told herself, with increasing confidence. “Dear me! I wish I’d never found the old thing up garret.”

The four Corner House girls went to church with Mrs. MacCall and Aunt Sarah. But Barnabetta would not go. She excused herself by saying that she did not wish to leave her father alone.

Sunday school followed the preaching service almost immediately; but as soon as this was over, Agnes hurried home. Ruth, with Tess and Dot, went around by the hospital to call on Mrs. Eland, the matron, and to enquire after Miss Pepperill.

They chanced to find the little gray lady sitting at her desk, and with certain yellowed old papers and letters, and several small books with ragged sheepskin covers, before her.

“These were Uncle Lemuel’s,” she explained to Ruth, touching the dog’s-eared books. “His diaries. It does seem as though he loved to put down on paper all his miserly thoughts and accounts of his very meanest acts. He must have been a strange combination of business acumen and simple-mindedness.”

“I wish for your sake, Mrs. Eland,” Ruth said, “that he had kept to the very day of his death the riches he once accumulated.”

“Oh! I wish so, too—for Teeny’s sake,” replied Mrs. Eland, referring to her unfortunate sister by the pet name she had called her in childhood.

“Are these the books and papers Mr. Bob Buckham brought you from the Quoharie poorhouse, where Mr. Aden died?”

“Yes. I have never read through the diaries. I only wanted to find an account of the five hundred dollars belonging to Mr. Buckham’s father that my father turned over to Uncle Lemuel.

“But here are notes of really vast sums. Uncle Lemuel must have really been quite beside himself long before he died. In one place he writes about drawing out of several banks sums aggregating over fifty thousand dollars.

“Think of it!” and Mrs. Eland sighed. “It was at the time of the panic. He speaks of being distrustful of banks. So he drew out all he had. But, of course, he did not have so much money as that. Fifty thousand dollars!”

“Perhaps he did have it,” said Ruth.

“Then what became of it? He writes in one place of losing a hundred dollars in some transaction, and he goes on about it, in a raving way, as though it was every cent of money he ever owned,” declared Mrs. Eland. “Oh, dear! What a terrible thing it must be to be a miser.”

“But—but suppose he did have so much money at one time?”

“He dreamed it,” laughed the hospital matron.

“You’re not sure,” ventured the Corner House girl.

“Then what became of it? I am sure he never gave it away,” Mrs. Eland said, shaking her head. “And here, where he speaks of coming to live with your Uncle Peter Stower, in the very last year of his life, Uncle Lemuel says:

“‘Peter Stower always was a fool. He’ll give me bite and sup as long as I need. Let him believe me rich or poor as he pleases.’”

“Oh, dear me,” sighed Ruth, “I always have felt bad because Uncle Peter turned him out and Mr. Aden wandered away to die at the Quoharie poorhouse. Your uncle couldn’t have been in his right mind.”

“Of course he wasn’t,” rejoined Mrs. Eland. “Why! it shows that here. On almost the last page of his diary—it was written after he left the old Corner House—he says:

“‘I don’t trust banks; but Peter Stower is too mean to be dishonest. My book is safe with him.’

“I suppose,” the little gray lady said, “Uncle Lemuel had an idea of sending these diaries to your Uncle Peter to keep for him. I can’t think of any other book he was referring to.”

“A book?” murmured Ruth, quaveringly.

“Yes. And once before he speaks here—where is it?—of his diary, I suppose, as his ‘beautiful book.’ Ah! here it is: ‘Have pasted all my Wash. & Pitts. R. R. B.‘s in my beautiful book.’ Now,” and Mrs. Eland laughed, “what do you suppose ‘Wash. & Pitts.’ means?”

Ruth sprang up, trembling, and with clasped hands.

“Oh, Mrs. Eland!” she cried, “‘Washington & Pittsburgh’—and he meant railroad bonds, of course! It must be! it must be!”

“Well—but—my dear!” said Mrs. Eland, amazed by Ruth’s excitement. “Of course, Uncle Lemuel may have meant that. However, there are no bonds of any kind pasted into these books. I am sure of that,” and she laughed again, but rather ruefully.

Ruth Kenway could not join in her laughter. She had made a tremendous discovery—and one that filled her with actual terror. She scarcely knew how she managed to excuse herself from the hospital matron’s presence, and got out upon the street again with Tess and Dot.

CHAPTER XXI—“EVERYTHING AT SIXES AND SEVENS”

Agnes knew that it must be worry over the lost album and money that had got upon her older sister’s nerves. But even she did not suspect the full measure of Ruth’s trouble, for the latter had said nothing about the discovery in Lemuel Aden’s old diary. But Agnes heartily wished she had never made that odd find in the garret.

She had not seen Barnabetta save at dinner time, and the clown had not left his room. Agnes was troubled about Barnabetta. The little girls found the trapeze artist a most delightful companion; but Barnabetta had scarcely a word to say to either of the older Corner House sisters.

As for Neale—Agnes Kenway could have cried about Neale. She and the white-haired boy had been the very best of friends.

“And I’m sure I didn’t say anything to anger him. He needn’t have got mad at me,” was Agnes’ thought. “Whatever he wanted in that closet last night—

“There! I won’t believe it was Neale at all. Why should he want to steal anything here, when he could have had it for the asking?

“But who else could have gotten out of that porch door, past Tom Jonah, without being eaten up?” murmured poor Agnes. “Oh, dear me! how can I believe it of him?”

Really, everything was at sixes and at sevens. The week began badly. The two smallest Corner House girls seemed afflicted with a measure of the unhappiness that cloaked Ruth, Agnes and their guest, Barnabetta Scruggs.

Dot actually quarreled with Mabel Creamer! It came about in this wise:

After school on Monday the smallest Corner House girl had been to the store for Mrs. MacCall. Coming home, as she came past the Creamer cottage she heard Mrs. Creamer scolding Mabel.

“You bad, bad girl!” the unwise mother was saying to the sullen Mabel. “I should think your little brother would cry whenever you come near him. You don’t deserve to have a dear, baby brother. Get out of my sight, you naughty child!”

When Mabel appeared at her gate to face the wondering Dot, she did not look heart-broken because Bubby had taken a sudden dislike to her.

“What ever is the matter, Mabel Creamer?” asked the smallest Corner House girl.

“Oh—nothin’. Only I just fixed that kid for once,” declared Mabel, with impish satisfaction. “I don’t believe they’ll leave me to watch him all the time while Lyddy and Peg go off to a movin’ pitcher show.”

“Oh, my!” said the awe-struck Dot. “What ever did you do?”

“I’ll tell you what I did, Dot Kenway,” said Mabel, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Bubby wants to be played with all the time. You don’t get a minute to call your soul your own,” she added, quoting some of her elders.

“So, if he wanted to be amused all so fine, I amused him. I smeared molasses on his fingers and then I gave him a feather out of the pillow. Oh, he was amused! He was trying to pick that feather off his fingers for half an hour, and was just as still as still! It might ha’ lasted longer, too, only he got mad with the feather, and bawled.”

Dot did not know whether to laugh at, or be horrified by, such depravity as this. But she was glad that Mabel was free to go home with her at this time, for Tess had been kept after school.

“We’ve got four of just the cunningest kittens,” Dot said, to her visitor. “Of course, they are really Almira’s. Santa Claus got them for her. But we call them ours.”

“My! isn’t that fine?” cried Mabel. “We’ve got two cats, but they’re lazy old things. They never have any kittens. We call them Paul and Timothy.”

Almira’s young family still nested upon Unc’ Rufus’ old coat in the woodshed. Dot put two in her apron to bring them out on the porch where the cunning little things could be seen. But when Mabel grabbed up the other two there was a good deal of noise attending the operation.

“Oh, Mabel! don’t hurt them,” cried Dot.

“I’m not hurting them,” responded Mabel, sharply. “I’m carrying them just as careful as I can by their stems.”

“Oh, dear—don’t!” shrieked Dot, quite horrified. “Them’s their tails, Mabel Creamer.”

“Huh! what else are they for, I’d like to know?” propounded the visitor. “A cat’s tail is made for it to be grabbed by.”

“You—you——You’re cruel, Mabel Creamer!” gasped Dot. “Put them down!”

She tumbled the two staggering kittens out of her own lap and ran to rescue the poor, squalling mites in Mabel’s hands. Mabel was not a child to be driven in any case. There was a struggle. Dot rescued the two little mites, but Mabel slapped the little Corner House girl’s cheek twice—and her hand left its mark.

“You’re a nasty little thing, Dot Kenway!” scolded Mabel, marching down the steps and out at the gate. “I never did like you much, and I just hate you, now.”

Dot sat down, sobbing, on the step, and nursed the bruised cheek. The four little kittens squirmed all over her lap and tumbled about like drunken caterpillars—and that helped some. For soon the tears were dried and Dot began to laugh at their antics. Just the same, Mabel’s blow had left a bruise upon the smallest Corner House girl’s heart which she long remembered.

Tess had had a rather hard day, too. Of course, there was a new teacher ruling over the eighth grade; and strict as Miss Pepperill had been, even Sammy Pinkney would have been glad to “swap back” for the red-haired teacher, after a session’s experience with Miss Grimsby.

Miss Grimsby was young, but she looked a lot older than most of the other teachers. She wore her sleek, black hair brushed straight back from a high, blue-veined forehead. She wore enormous, shell-bowed spectacles.

Miss Grimsby was what is known as a substitute teacher. She had brought to her work in the eighth grade the very newest ideas about teaching taught in the normal schools. She knew all about her textbooks, and how to teach the studies allotted her; but she did not know the first living thing about those small animals known as boys and girls.

She was fond of standing up before the class and giving little lectures upon a multitude of subjects. This method of teaching was much approved by the faculty of the normal college from which Miss Grimsby had just graduated.

Poor Jakey Gerlach had already come into conflict with the new teacher, and once having decided that Jakey was a “bad” boy, Miss Grimsby saw him only in that peculiar light, no matter what he did.

“Children,” said she, on one occasion, “you should be able to do anything equally well with either hand. That is called ‘being ambidextrous.’ See! I write with either hand, like this,” and she illustrated with chalk upon the blackboard.

“With a little practice you will find it just as easy to do anything with one hand as it is with the other. Will you try? Jakey Gerlach! What are you squirming there for in that disgraceful manner?”

“I—I—please, Teacher,” stammered Jakey, “I was only trying to put mine left hand in mine right-hand trousers’ pocket.”

And Jakey remained after school for this. He was not alone in his punishment. More than half the eighth grade began to report late at their homes nowadays.

On this special “blue Monday,” Tess Kenway was one of the unfortunates. Without being a goody-goody girl, Tess had a remarkable record for deportment. It hurt her cruelly to be told to remain with the other culprits on this occasion.

Nor did she think she deserved the punishment. It came about through her trying to help Etta Spears, who sat across the aisle from Tess.

Etta got up to recite and dropped her slate pencil. When the next girl, Julia Bowen, was called to arise, she would be sure to put her foot upon the pencil and break it. So Tess leaned from her seat to rescue the pencil.

“What are you doing—crawling on the floor there—Theresa?” demanded Miss Grimsby, sharply.

“I—I was reaching for this pencil, please, Teacher,” said Tess, holding up her prize.

“Bring it here instantly! If you can’t keep your pencils in their proper place in your desk, you must lose them.”

“Oh, but please, Miss Grimsby! It isn’t my pencil,” gasped Tess.

“Then, what are you doing with it?” demanded the teacher, severely.

“Oh, Teacher!” almost sobbed Tess.

“Bring that pencil here!”

“But it is Etta’s!” Tess, in desperation, cried.

“How came it on the floor?”

“She dropped it, Teacher.”

“Bring it here. Etta will go without her pencil for a day. You, Theresa, will remain after school for interfering with the pencil and for interrupting the class.

“Next girl! Julia Bowen! Rise!”

So Tess was not at home when Mabel Creamer slapped Dot and broke the truce that had endured for a long time between the Creamer cottage and the old Corner House.

Of course, Dot told her all about it. Tess was the gentlest child imaginable, but that Dot should have been struck, stirred the older sister “all up.”

“The awful thing!” she gasped. “Why—why didn’t you call Ruthie—or Aggie?”

“Why—ee!” said Dot, slowly. “What good would that do, Tessie? They couldn’t put the slap back. My face would have ached just the same.”

“Never mind, dear,” crooned Tess. “I’ll give you my best pencil. I don’t much care for pencils any more, anyway.”

Ruth had been to the bank again at noon. She showed the old banknote to the cashier, Mr. Crouch being out. The cashier said the bill was perfectly good.

“And that settles it,” she said, wearily, to Agnes, on their way home from school. “If one bill is good the others must be.”

“Oh! I can’t believe it!” murmured Agnes. “Fifty thousand dollars in cash!”

“And as much more in unregistered railroad bonds. They were perfectly good, too—and there must be a lot of dividends due upon them. Oh, a fortune indeed!” groaned Ruth, in conclusion.

“I can’t believe it,” repeated her astonished sister.

“I can believe it—very easily,” Ruth retorted. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Agnes that all that fortune they had lost belonged to Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill. But Agnes said:

“But Neale could not possibly have known it was good.”

“Oh! Neale!” exclaimed Ruth, exasperated.

“You don’t really believe he would do anything wrong, do you, Ruthie?” queried Agnes, pleadingly.

“He did enough wrong when he carried that book away with him to Tiverton.”

“But I let him have the book,” Agnes confessed.

“He had no right to go off with it,” the other said stubbornly. “And when he brought it back, why did he throw it down there on the porch in that careless manner?”

“Of course he didn’t know the money was good,” Agnes repeated, trying to bolster up her own shaking faith in Neale O’Neil.

For a very unhappy thought had come into Agnes’ mind. Ruth had been so certain that the money and the bonds were good that she might have convinced Neale that evening, when he had come home from Tiverton. Agnes was quite sure he had not considered the printed banking paper worth anything before that time. Had he found a chance to take the book out of the bag and hide it after he had flung himself in anger out of the sitting room?

“I don’t know how he could have done it,” groaned Agnes, to herself. “But why did he come back again that night, if it wasn’t for the album?”

She had to admit that Neale must have been the midnight visitor to the dining room. There was no other explanation of that incident.

Neale had not been to church on Sunday, but she had seen him at school on this day, for he was in her grade; but he had not spoken to her or even looked at her.

Agnes was hurt to the quick by this. She felt that Ruth had been unkind to Neale; but on her part she was sure she was guilty of no unfriendliness.

“He needn’t spit it out on me,” was the way Agnes inelegantly expressed it. “And why did he want to come over here and play burglar Saturday night? And goodness! what did he want in that closet in the dining room chimney?

“He surely wouldn’t want Aunt Sarah’s peppermints,” she giggled. “And what else is there in that cupboard?”

The thought sent Agnes marching into the dining room to look at the locked door. And there stood Barnabetta Scruggs!

Barnabetta was at the door of the closet in the chimney. She did not appear to hear Agnes come into the room. She was closely examining the lock on the closet door.

“What under the sun is she after?” thought Agnes. “What’s that in her hand? A pair of shears?”

Barnabetta raised the shears just as though she contemplated trying to pick the lock with them. She laid hold upon the knob and shook the door.

“For pity’s sake, Barnabetta!” exclaimed Agnes. “What do you want there?”

The circus girl jumped and actually screamed. Her thin face flushed and then paled. Her eyes flashed.

“I might ha’ known ’twas you—always snoopin’ around!” snarled Barnabetta.

“Why—why—”

“Can’t I look at that old lock if I want to? I’m not hurtin’ it.”

“And I’m pretty sure you can’t unlock it with those shears,” returned the wondering Agnes.

“Who’s trying to unlock it?” snapped Barnabetta.

“You were.”

“Weren’t, neither!” declared the circus girl, throwing down the shears. “Leastways, not for myself,” she added.

“I’d like to know what it is you want out of that closet—what anybody wants there,” Agnes said, wonderingly.

“Your auntie wants some more peppermints,” said Barnabetta, boldly. “She couldn’t unlock it with the key. I didn’t know but the lock could be picked.”

“Where’s the key?” asked Agnes, swiftly.

“Your auntie took it away with her again.”

Agnes stared at her in amazement. She believed Barnabetta must be telling an untruth. “I’m going to find out what’s in that closet—that’s what I am going to do,” she declared.

She marched out of the room. She heard Barnabetta laugh unpleasantly as she closed the door. Agnes went up to Aunt Sarah’s room.

“Aunt Sarah,” Agnes said earnestly, “won’t you let me have the key of the dining room closet? I want to get something out of it.”

“Good Land of Liberty!” exclaimed Aunt Sarah, with asperity. “You’re welcome to that old key, I’m sure. I dunno why I brought it up here again. Ye can’t unlock it, gal. I declare! I was an old silly to lock the door the other night. Now the lock’s fouled and ye can’t turn the key neither-which-way!”