That's a verse," concluded Dot.

"Miss Pepperill," observed Tess, sadly, "said only yesterday that if we were in the play at all we might act the part of imps better than anything else. It would come natural to us."

"Poor Miss Pepperpot!" laughed Agnes. "She must find your class a great cross, Tess. How's Sammy standing just now?"

"He hasn't done anything to get her very mad since he wrote about the duck," Tess said gravely. "But Sadie Goronofsky got a black mark yesterday. And Miss Pepperill laughed, too."

"What for?" asked Ruth.

"Why, teacher asked why Belle Littleweed hadn't been at school for two days and Alfredia Blossom told her she guessed Belle's father was dead. He was 'spected to die, you know."

"Well, what about Sadie?" asked Agnes, for Tess seemed to have lost the thread of her story.

"Why, Sadie speaks up and says: 'Teacher, I don't believe Mr. Littleweed is dead at all. I see their clothes on the line and they was all white—nightgowns and all.'"

"The idea!" giggled Agnes.

"That's what Miss Pepperill said. She asked Sadie if she thought folks wore black nightgowns when they went into mourning, and Sadie says: 'Why not, teacher? Don't they feel just as bad at night as they do in the daytime?' So then Miss Pepperill said Sadie ought not to ask such silly questions, and she gave her a black mark. But I saw her laughing behind her spectacles!"

"My! but Tess is the observant kid," said Neale, laughing. "She laughed behind her spectacles, did she?"

"Yes. I know when she laughs, no matter how cross her voice sounds," declared Tess, confidently. "If you look right through her spectacles you'll see her eyes jumping. But I guess she's afraid to let us all see that she feels pleasant."

"She's afraid to spoil her discipline, I suppose," said Ruth. "But if ever I teach school I hope I can govern my scholars by making them love me—not through fear."

"Why, of course they'll all fall in love with you, Ruthie!" cried Agnes, with assurance. "Who wouldn't? But that old Pepperpot is another proposition."

"Perhaps she is a whole lot better than she appears," Ruth said mildly. "And I don't think we ought to call her 'Pepperpot.' Tess certainly has found her blind side."

"Ah, of course! Tess is like you," rejoined Agnes. "She would disarm a wild tiger."

"Oh! oh!" cried Neale, hearing this remark—and certainly what Agnes said was wilder than any tiger! "How would you go to work to disarm a tiger, Aggie? Never knew they had arms."

"Oh, Mr. Smartie!"

"I don't know how smart I am," said Neale. "I was setting here thinking——"

"You mean you were sitting," snapped Agnes. "You're neither a hen nor a mason."

"Huh! who said I was?" asked Neale.

"Why," returned the girl, "a hen sets on eggs, and a mason sets the stone in a wall, for instance. You sit on that seat, I should hope."

"Oh, cricky! Get ap, Dobbin and Dewlap! What do you know about Aggie's turning critic all of a sudden?" cried Neale.

"Alas for our learning!" chuckled Ruth. "A hen sets only in colloquial language. To a purist she always sits—according to my English lesson of yesterday.

"But you'd better see where you are turning to, young man," she went on, briskly. "Isn't yonder the road to Lycurgus Billet's place? He owns the chestnut woods."

"We can go that way if you like," admitted Neale. "But I want to come around by the Ipswitch Curve on the interurban, either going or coming."

"What for?" asked Ruth, while Agnes cried:

"Oh, don't Neale! I never want to see that horrid place again."

"I just want to," said Neale to Ruth. "Mr. Bob Buckham lives near there and I worked for him once."

Until Neale's uncle, Mr. William Sorber, had undertaken to pay for the boy's education, Neale had earned his own living after he had run away from the circus.

"Oh, don't, Neale!" begged Agnes, faintly.

"Why shouldn't we drive back that way?" asked Ruth, surprised at her sister's manner and words. Ruth did not know all about Agnes' trouble over the raid on the farmer's strawberry patch. "But let's drive direct to the chestnut woods now."

"All right," said Neale, turning the horses. "Go 'lang! We'll have to stop at Billet's house and ask permission. He is choice of his woods, for there's a lot of nice young timber there and the blight has not struck the trees. He's awfully afraid of fire."

"Isn't that Mr. Billet rather an odd stick?" asked Ruth. "You know, we never were up this way but once. We saw him then. He was lying under a wall with his gun, watching for a chicken hawk. His wife said he'd been there all day, since early in the morning. She was chopping wood to heat her water for tea," added Ruth with a sniff.

Neale chuckled. "Lycurgus ought to have been called 'Nimrod,'" he said.

"Why?" demanded Agnes.

"Because he is a mighty hunter. And that is really all he does take any interest in. I bet he'd lie out under a stone wall for a week if he thought he could get a shot at a snowbird! And he'd shoot it, too, if he had half a chance. He never misses, they say."

"Such shiftlessness!" sniffed Ruth again. "And his wife barefooted and his children in rags and tatters."

"That girl was a bright-looking girl," Agnes interposed. "You know—the one with the flour-sack waist on. Oh, Neale!" she added, giggling, "you could read in faint red marking, 'Somebody's XXXX Flour,' right across the small of her back!"

"Poor child," sighed Ruth. "That was Sue—wasn't that her name? Sue Billet."

"A scrawny little one with a tip-tilted nose, and running bare-legged, though she must be twelve," said Neale. "I remember her."

"Poor child," Ruth said again.

There were other things to arouse the oldest Corner House girl's sympathy about the Billet premises when the picnicking party arrived there. Two lean hounds first of all charged out from under the house to attack Tom Jonah.

"Oh!" cried Dot. "Stop them! They'll eat poor Tom Jonah up, they are so hungry."

Tess, too, was somewhat disturbed, for the hounds seemed as savage as bears. Tom Jonah, although slow to wrath, knew well how to acquit himself in battle. He snapped once at each of the hounds, and they fled, yelping.

"And serves 'em just right!" declared Agnes. "Oh! here comes Mrs. Lycurgus."

A slatternly woman in a soiled wrapper, men's shoes on her stockingless feet and her black, stringy hair hanging down her back, came from around the corner of the ramshackle, tumble-down house.

"Why—ya'as; I reckon so. You ain't folks that'll build fires in our woodlot an' leave 'em careless like. Lycurgus, he's gone up that a-way hisself. There's a big eagle been seed up there, an' he's a notion he might shoot it. Mebbe there's a pair on 'em. He wants ter git it, powerful. Sue, she's gone with her pap. But I reckon you know the way?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Neale. Then, after he had driven on a few yards, he said to the girls: "Say! wouldn't it be great to catch sight of that eagle?"

"An eagle?" repeated Agnes, in doubt. "Do you suppose there really is an eagle so near to civilization?"

"You don't call Mrs. Lycurgus really civilized?" chuckled Neale. "And the Billets and Bob Buckham are the nearest neighbors for some miles to his eagleship, in all probability."

"I suppose it is lonely up here," admitted Ruth.

"This is a hilly country. There are plenty of wild spots back on the high ground, within a very few miles of this spot, where eagles might nest."

"An eagle's eyrie!" said Agnes, musingly. "And maybe eaglets in it."

"Like Mrs. Severn wears on her hat," said Dot, suddenly breaking in.

"What! Eaglets on her hat?" cried Agnes.

"Eaglets to trim hats with?" chuckled Neale. "That is a new style, for fair."

"Oh, dear me," said Ruth, with a sigh. "The child means aigrets. Though I am sorry if Mrs. Severn is cruel enough to follow such a fashion. That's a different kind of bird, honey."

"Anyway, there will not be young eagles at this time of year, I guess," Neale added.

"How would we ever climb up to an eyrie?" Tess asked. "They are in very inaccessible places."

"As inac—accessible," asked Dot, stumbling over the big word, "as Mrs. MacCall's highest preserve shelf?"

"Quite," laughed Ruth.

The road through which they now drove was really "woodsy." The leaves were changing from green to gold, for the sap was receding into the boles and roots of the trees. The leaves seemed to be putting on their bravest colors as though to flout Jack Frost.

Squirrels darted away, chattering and scolding, as the party advanced. These little fellows seemed to suspect that the woods were to be raided and some of the nuts, which they considered their own lawful plunder, taken away.

The Corner House girls, with their boy friend, did indeed find a goodly store of nuts. They camped in a pretty glade, where there was a spring, and tethered the horses where they could crop some sweet clover. And Neale built a real Gypsy fire, being careful that it should do no damage; and three stout stakes were set up over the blaze, a pot hung from their apex, and the tea made.

And the chestnuts! how they rained down when Neale climbed up the trees and swung himself out upon the branches, shaking them vigorously. The glossy brown nuts came out of their prickly nests in a hurry and were scattered widely on the leaf-carpeted ground.

Sometimes they came down in the burrs—maybe only "peeping" out; and getting them wholly out of the burrs was not so pleasant an occupation.

"Why is it," complained Dot sucking her fingers, stung by the prickly burrs, "that they put such thistles on these chestnuts? It's worse than a rosebush—or a pincushion. Couldn't the nuts grow just as good without such awfully sharp jackets on 'em?"

"Oh, Dot," said Tess, to whom the smallest Corner House girl addressed this speech. "I suspect the burrs are made prickly for a very good reason. You see, the chestnuts are not really ripe until the burrs are broken open by the frost. Then the squirrels can get at them easily."

"Well, I see that," agreed Dot.

"But don't you see, if the little squirrels—the baby ones—could get at the chestnuts before they were ripe, they would all get sick, and have the stomach-ache—most likely be like children, boys 'specially, who eat green apples? You know how sick Sammy Pinkney was that time he got into our yard and stole the green apples."

"Oh, I see," Dot acknowledged. "I s'pose you're right, Tess. But the burrs are dreadful. Seems to me they could have found something to put 'round a chestnut besides just old prickles."

"How'd they do it?" demanded Tess, rather exasperated at her sister's obstinacy. Besides, the "prickles" were stinging her poor fingers, too. "How do you suppose they could keep the little squirrels from eating the chestnuts green, then?"

"We—ell," said Dot, thoughtfully, "they might do like our teacher says poison ought to be kept. She read us about how dangerous it is to have poison around—and I read some in the book about it, too."

"But chestnuts aren't poison!" cried Tess.

"They must be when they are green," declared the smaller girl, confidently, possessing just enough knowledge of her subject to make her positive. "Else the squirrels wouldn't have the stomach-ache. And you say they do."

"I said they might," denied Tess, hastily.

"Well, poison is a very dang'rous thing," went on Dot, pleased to air her knowledge. "It ought to be doctored at once and not allowed to run on—for that's very ser'ous indeed. And we mustn't treat poison rough; it's li'ble to run into blood poison."

"Oh!" gasped Tess, who had not had the benefits of "easy lessons in physiology" when she was in Dot's grade, that being a new study.

"You ought to keep poison," went on Dot, nodding her dark little head vigorously, "in a little room under lock and key in a little bottle and the cork in so it can't get out, and hide the key and have a skeleton on the bottle and not let nobody go there!" and Dot came out, breathless but triumphant, with this complete and efficacious arrangement.

The bigger girls had gathered a great heap of the brown nuts before the picnic dinner was served. Neale had done something beside shake down the nuts. He had stripped off great pieces of bark from the yellow birch trees and cut them into platters and plates on which the food could be served very nicely. Neale was so resourceful, indeed, that Ruth had to acknowledge that boys really were of some account, after all.

When they sat down, Turk-fashion, around the tablecloth which had been spread, the oldest Corner House girl sighed, however: "But mercy! he eats his share. Where do you suppose he puts it all, Aggie?"

"I wouldn't be unladylike enough to inquire," returned the roguish sister, with a toss of her head. "How dreadful you are, Ruth!"

It was a very pleasant picnic. The crisp air was exhilarating; the dry leaves rustled every time the wind breathed on them; and the tinkle of the spring made pleasant music. Squirrels chattered noisily; jays shrieked their alarm; the lazy caw of a crow was heard from a distance.

The tang of balsam was in the air and the fall haze looked blue and mysterious at the end of the aisles made by the rows of tall trees. It was after dinner that a seemingly well-beaten path attracted them, and the whole party, including Tom Jonah, started for a stroll.

The path led them to an opening in the forest where a stake-and-rider fence was all that separated them from a great rolling pasture. In the distance were the craggy hills, where great boulders cropped out and the forest was thin and straggly.

It was a narrow valley that lay before the young explorers. Directly opposite was a crag as barren as a bald head.

"Look at the cloud shadow sailing over the field," said Ruth, contemplatively.

Her remark might have passed without comment had not the shadow, thus mentioned, changed form and darted suddenly to one side.

"Hi!" exclaimed Neale. "That's no cloud shadow."

"Look! look!" squealed Tess. "See the aeroplane!"

A flying machine had been exhibited at Milton only a few weeks before, and the aviator had done some fancy flying over the house-roofs of the town. Little wonder that Tess thought this must be another aeroplane, for the huge bird that swooped earthward cast a shadow quite as large as had the aeroplane she had seen.

"The eagle!" exclaimed Neale. "Oh, look! look!"

The whole party—even Tom Jonah—was transfixed with wonder as they observed a huge bird sail slowly across the valley toward them and finally alight upon a bare branch of a tall, dead pine at the edge of the field. There the eagle poised for a few moments, its wings half spread, "tip-tilting," as Agnes said, till he had struck the right balance. Then he settled more comfortably on his perch, turned his head till his harsh beak and evil eye were aimed over his shoulder, steadily viewing something in the field below him.

The bird did not see the party of spectators at the boundary fence; but they quickly discovered the object which the bird of prey observed.

"There! Oh, look there!" gasped Agnes. "That thing's moving!"

"It's a girl!" murmured Ruth.

"Sue Billet—as sure as you live," muttered Neale. "There's Lycurgus—over behind the fence—he's after the eagle!"

"What a dreadful thing!" exclaimed Ruth, aloud. "Is he using his own child for bait! That's what he's doing! Oh, Neale! Oh, Agnes! He's sent that child out there to attract the eagle's attention," Ruth went on to cry. "What a wicked, wicked thing to do!"

CHAPTER IX

BOB BUCKHAM TAKES A HAND

The eagle raised his wings slowly; they quivered and he stretched his neck around so that he could glare again at the trembling little girl. It was no wonder Sue was frightened, and stumbled, and fell into a bed of nettles, and then—screamed!

"Drat the young 'un!" exclaimed Lycurgus, just as the eagle made an awkward spring into the air.

But the bird did not fly away; instead it swooped around in a circle, displaying great strength and agility in its motion. It's wings spread all of six feet. They beat the air tremendously, and then the bird sailed low, aiming directly for the child just climbing out of the bed of nettles.

It was plain that Lycurgus had not been quite ready for the eagle's swoop. He had to try for the bird, however. The screaming Sue could not extricate herself from the dangerous situation in which her father had placed her. Lycurgus shouldered his gun and pulled the trigger.

He may have had a reputation for never missing his quarry; but his gun missed that time, for sure! Not a feather flew from the great bird. Its pinions beat the air so terribly that poor little Sue was thrown to the ground once more.

Agnes shrieked. The two smaller girls were awestruck. Neale O'Neil fairly groaned. It seemed as though the child must fall a victim to the eagle's beak and claws.

Its huge wings, beating the air, drowned most other sounds. Lycurgus struggled to slip another shell into his old-fashioned rifle. Somehow the mechanism had fouled.

"Pap! Pap!" screeched the girl at last. "He's goin' to git me!"

At that shrill and awful cry the man flung away his gun and leaped the rail fence into the open field. What he thought he might do with his bare hands against the talons and armed beak of the bird of prey, it would be impossible to say. But whatever fault might be found with Lycurgus Billet, he was no coward.

Bare-handed, hatless, and as white as paper, the man ran toward his little girl. The shadow of the swooping eagle covered them both.

Then it was that Tess Kenway awoke from her trance. She shrieked, suddenly: "Tom! Tom Jonah! Do, do catch it! Tom Jonah! Sic him, boy!"

The growling dog needed no second urging. He flung himself through the fence and dashed across the intervening space. At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons, the big dog leaped.

But the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil, with excited cries, followed in the wake of the lumbering eagle. It plowed across the field, rising and falling with alternate strokes of its wings. Tom Jonah seemed in a very precarious situation, indeed.

The old dog had no idea of letting go his hold, however. When once his jaws were clamped upon an enemy, he was there to stay. Tess was wildly excited. Dot was crying frankly. Agnes called encouragement to Tom Jonah. Ruth and Neale were as anxious as the others for the safety of the old dog, but they saved their breath. All ran as hard as they could run after the eagle and Tom Jonah.

For, scream and beat his wings as he might, the bird could not dislodge the dog. Half the time Tom Jonah was on the ground, and when he felt the earth he dragged back and tore at his feathered antagonist with an obstinacy remarkable.

The eagle could not thrash Tom Jonah with his wings to any purpose; nor could he fix his talons in the dog, or spear him with his beak, while they both were in the air. As the huge bird sprang up the dog bounced into the air, too; but only for a moment or two at a time. The bird was growing weaker.

Finally the eagle changed its tactics, and for a moment the two antagonists whirled over and over on the ground. How the feathers flew! In some way the bird's talons found the dog's flesh.

It was then, when reckless Neale was trying to find a stone or club, that a hoarse voice was heard shouting:

"Get away! stand back! I'm going to shoot that critter!"

"Oh!" shrieked Tess Kenway, not at all the timid and mild little girl she usually was. "Oh! don't you dare shoot Tom Jonah!"

There sounded the heavy explosion of a gun. The eagle screamed no more. Its great wings relaxed and it tumbled to the earth. Tom Jonah sprang away from the thrashing bird, which died hard. The man who had shot it strode in from the other side of the field.

It was not Lycurgus Billet. It was an oldish man, with a big, bushy head of hair and whiskers. He carried his smoking gun in the hollow of his arm.

"By cracky! I made a good shot that time, for a fact!" this stranger declared.

But he was not a stranger to, at least, one of the picnic party. Neale O'Neil cried out: "Oh, Mr. Buckham, that was a fine shot! And just in the nick of time."

Agnes almost fell over at this exclamation of her boy friend. She clung to Neale's jacket sleeve, whispering:

"Oh, dear me! Let's not speak to him! Come, Neale! let's run. I—I am so ashamed about those strawberries."

"Step on that furderinest wing, young feller," said the big, old man to Neale. "He's dead—jest as dead as though he'd laid there a year. He's jest a-kickin' like a old rooster with his head off. Don't know he's dead, that's all. Step on that wing; it'll keep him from thrashin' hisself to pieces," added the farmer, as Neale O'Neil obeyed him.

The girls looked on in awe. Tom Jonah stood by, panting, his tongue out and his plume waving proudly.

"That's a great dog," said Mr. Bob Buckham.

"And—— Why, hullo, son! you used to work for us, didn't you?"

"Yes, Mr. Buckham," replied Neale.

"Ho, ho!" shouted the bushy-headed old man, spying Lycurgus and Sue coming from the edge of the woods. "I beat ye to it that time, Lycurgus. And what was little Sissy doing out there where the old eagle could git his eye on her? I swow! if it hadn't been for the dog, mebbe the eagle would ha' pecked her some—eh?"

"The eagle would have carried her off—the poor little thing," said Ruth, indignantly.

"No!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham.

"I believe it would, sir," Neale said.

"And that isn't the worst of it," went on the wrought up Corner House girl.

"What ain't the worst of it, miss?" asked the farmer.

"That poor little thing was sent out there by her father to attract the eagle."

"What?" roared Bob Buckham, his great face turning red with anger and his deep-set eyes flashing. "You mean to tell me he set little Sissy for eagle bait?"

He strode forward to meet Lycurgus Billet, leaving the dead bird behind him. The chagrined hunter smiled a sickly smile as big Bob Buckham approached.

"The old gun went back on me that time—she sure did, Bob," Billet said. "I would ha' got that critter, else. Hullo! what's the matter?"

For the farmer reached out a ham-like hand and seized the wiry Lycurgus by the shoulder, and shook him.

"Hey! what you doin'?" the smaller man repeated.

"I've a mind to shake the liver-lights out'n you, Lycurgus Billet!" declared the farmer. "To send little Sissy out to be eagle bait fer ye! I—I—That's the worst I ever heard of!"

"Say!" sputtered Lycurgus. "What d'ye mean? I 'spected ter shoot the critter, didn't I?"

"But ye didn't."

"Just the same she warn't hurt. Air you, Sue?" demanded the little girl's father.

Sue shook her head. She hadn't got over her scare, however. "My!" she confessed, "I thought he was a-goin' to grab me—I sure did! And he had sech a wicked eye."

"You hear that?" demanded old Bob Buckham, fiercely, and Lycurgus shrank away from the indignant farmer as though he expected to feel the heavy hand again—and to sterner purpose this time.

"You ain't no business with a young'un like Sissy—you ornery pup!" growled the old man in the culprit's ear. "I wish she was mine. You ain't fitten to own little Sissy."

It was evident that the old farmer thought a good deal of the backwoods' child. Lycurgus said no further word. He walked over to the eagle and looked down at it.

"He's a whopper!" he observed, smiling in his weak way at the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil.

Ruth only nodded coolly. Agnes turned her back on him, while the little girls stared as wonderingly at Lycurgus Billet as they would had he been a creature from another world.

Bob Buckham and little Sissy, as he called her, were having a talk at one side. Something that shone brightly passed from the farmer's hand into the child's grimed palm.

"Come on, Pap!" said Sue, bruskly. "Let's go home. These folks don't want us here."

"Lazy, shiftless, inconsequential critter," growled Bob Buckham, coming back to the dead eagle, as Lycurgus and his daughter moved slowly away across the field.

But then the old man's face cleared up quickly, though he sighed as he spoke.

"That only goes to show ye! Some folks never have no chick nor child and others has got 'em so plentiful that they kin afford ter use 'em for eagle bait."

His lips took a humorous twist at the corners, his eyes sparkled, and altogether his bewhiskered countenance took on a very pleasant expression. The Corner House girls—at least, Ruth and Tess and Dorothy—began to like the old farmer right away.

"Got to take that critter home," declared Mr. Bob Buckham, as enthusiastic as a boy over his good luck. "Don't know how I come to lug my old gun along to-day when I started down this way. I never amounted to much as a hunter before. Always have left that to fellers like Lycurgus."

"It was very fortunate for that poor little Sue that you had your rifle," Ruth said warmly.

"Oh, no, ma'am," returned Mr. Buckham. "It was that dog of yourn saved little Sissy. But I reckon I saved the dog."

"And we're awfully much obliged to you for that, sir," spoke up Tess. "Aren't we, Dot?"

"Oh, yes!" agreed the smallest Corner House girl. "I thought poor Tom Jonah was going to be carried right up in the air, and that the aigrets would eat him!"

"The what would eat him?" demanded the farmer, paying close attention to what the little girls said, but puzzled enough at Dot's "association of ideas."

Tess explained. "She means the young eagles. She expects the nest is full of hungry little eagles. It would have been dreadful for Tom Jonah to have been carried off just like a lamb. I've seen a picture of an eagle carrying away a lamb in his claws."

"And many a one I reckon this big critter has stole," agreed the farmer. "Right out of my own flock, perhaps. But your dog was too big a load for him."

"Now, son," he added, briskly to Neale, "you give me a h'ist with the bird. I'm going to take him home across my shoulders. Don't dare leave him here for fear some varmint will git him. I'll send the carcass right to town and have it stuffed." "Goodness!" murmured the startled Tess. "You don't eat eagles, do you, sir?"

"Ho, ho!" laughed the farmer. "No-sir-ree-sir! I mean we'll have the skin stuffed. When Mr. Eagle is mounted, you'll see him looking down from the top of that old corner cupboard of mine in the sittin' room—you remember it, Neale?"

"Yes, sir," said Neale, as he helped lift the heavy bird to the farmer's shoulders.

"What are you and these young ladies doin' around here to-day, Neale?" asked Mr. Buckham.

Neale told him. "Got a team, have you?" said the farmer. "Then drive right around to the house. You know the way, boy. I wanter git better acquainted with these little gals," and he smiled broadly upon Tess and Dot.

Ruth was doubtful. Agnes shook her head behind the old man's back and pouted "No!"

"I see that dog's ear is torn," went on Mr. Buckham. "I wanter doctor it a bit. These eagle's talons may be pizen as nightshade."

So Ruth politely thanked Mr. Bob Buckham and said they would drive to his house. So near was the farmhouse, indeed, that Tess and Dot begged to walk with the farmer and so be assured that Tom Jonah should have "medical attention" immediately. Of course, the old dog would not leave the children to go with the strange man alone.

"We can open the gates, too, for Mr. Buckham," said Tess.

"Run along, then, children," the eldest sister said. "We will soon drive over with the chestnuts." Then she added rather sharply, but under her breath, to Agnes: "I don't see what your objection is to going to Mr. Buckham's house. I think he is a real nice old man."

"Oh, I know he is," wailed her sister. "But you never stole his berries!"

"Aggie's conscience is troubling her," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "But don't you fret, Aggie. Old Bob Buckham won't know that you were one of the raiders last May."

"Of course he will. When he knows my name. Didn't he send my name to Mr. Marks with the others?"

"Did he?" returned Neale. "I wonder!"

CHAPTER X

SOMETHING ABOUT OLD TIMES

"Don't darst to," said Mr. Buckham. "The dogs'll tear it to pieces. I wanter fix this Tom Jonah's ear. He's a brave dog, Posy. If it hadn't been for him, I swow! Lycurgus Billet's Sue would have been kerried off by this old eagle," and he told the wondering girl about the adventure.

"Now, you take these little gals in to marm, while I fix up Tom Jonah," Mr. Buckham urged.

So Tess and Dot were ushered into the sitting room by the big girl, Posy. Mrs. Buckham was not likely to be found anywhere but in her chair, poor woman, as the children very soon learned. She was a gentle, gray-haired, becapped old lady who never left her chair, saving for her bed at night. She was a paralytic and could not walk at all; but her fingers were busy, and she was fairly surrounded by bright colored worsteds and wools, finished pieces of knitting and crocheting, and incompleted work of like character.

Out of this hedge of bright-hued fancy-work, Mrs. Buckham smiled upon the smaller Corner House girls quite as warmly as did Mr. Buckham himself.

"I do declare! this is a pleasure," she cried, drawing one little girl after the other to her to be kissed. "Little flower faces! Aren't they, Posy? Wish I had a garden full o' them—that I do!"

"My mercy, Mrs. Buckham! I'm glad you ain't," laughed the maid. "Not if they all favored Mr. Buckham and brought as much mud in on their feet as he does."

"Never mind, Posy," cried the very jolly invalid. "I don't track up your clean floors—and that's a blessing, isn't it?"

Dot looked rather askance at the bright-colored afghan that hid the crippled legs of the good woman. The legs were so still, and the afghan covered them so completely, that to the little girl's mind it seemed as though she had no lower limbs at all!

She and Tess, however, were soon quite friendly with the invalid. Posy bustled about between kitchen and sitting room, laying a round table in the latter room for tea for the expected guests. Mr. Buckham, having scraped his boots, came in.

"Well, how be ye, Marm?" he asked his wife, kissing her as though he had just returned from a long journey.

"Just the same, Bob," she replied, laughing. "I ain't been fur from my chair since you was gone."

Mr. Buckham chuckled hugely at this old pleasantry between them. They both seemed to accept her affliction as though it were a joke, or a matter of small importance. Yet Mrs. Buckham had been confined to her chair and her bed for twenty years.

Before Ruth and Agnes, with Neale O'Neil, reached the farmhouse, driving over from Lycurgus Billet's chestnut woods, Tess and Dot were having a most delightful visit. Dot was amusing Mrs. Buckham with her chatter, and likewise holding a hank of yarn for the invalid to wind off in a ball; while Tess, of course, had got upon her favorite topic of conversation, and was telling Mr. Buckham all about the need of the Women's and Children's Hospital, and about Mrs. Eland.

"You see, she's such an awfully nice lady—and so pretty," said Tess, warmly. "It would be an awful thing if she had to go away—and she hasn't any place to go. But the hospital's got to have money!"

"Eland—Eland?" repeated Mr. Bob Buckham, reflectively. "Isn't that name sort o' familiar, Marm?" he asked his wife.

"The Aden girl married an Eland," said Mrs. Buckham, quickly. "He died soon after and left her a widow. Is it the same? Marion Aden?"

"Mrs. Eland's name is Marion," said Tess, confidently. "She signed it to a note to us. Didn't she, Dot?"

"In the apple," replied Dot, promptly.

"What does the child mean—'in the apple'?" queried the laughing Mrs. Buckham.

"That's how she sent us our invitation to her party," said Dot.

"Only to an afternoon tea, child!" exclaimed Tess, quickly. "That isn't a party." Then she explained to Mrs. Buckham about the apples and the one that came back with the note inside. Meanwhile the farmer was very quiet and thoughtful.

"So," finished Tess, breathlessly, "we're going to stop at the hospital on our way home from school next Monday afternoon. Aren't we, Dot?"

"Ye-es," said the smaller girl, this time doubtfully. "If Mrs. MacCall finishes my Alice-doll's new cloak. Otherwise she can't go, and of course I can't go without her. She hasn't a thing fit to wear, now it's come fall."

"You ask Mrs. Eland," broke in Mr. Buckham, "if she happens to be any relation to Lemuel Aden."

"Now, Bob!" said his wife in an admonitory undertone, "never mind raking up dead and gone happenings."

"But I'm just curious—just curious," said the farmer. "Nothing to be done now about it——"

"Bob!"

"Well," subsided the farmer, "a man can't help thinkin' about money that he's lost. And that five hundred dollars was stole from us as sure as you're alive to-day, Marm."

"Never mind," his wife said lightly. "You've earned several five hundreds since that happened—you know you have, Bob Buckham. What's the good of worrying?"

"Ain't worrying," denied the farmer, quickly. "But I do despise a thief. I was brought up on the motter:

Now, Ruth and Agnes were being ushered into the room by the broadly smiling Posy just as Mr. Buckham recited this old jingle. Agnes flushed to the roots of her hair, and then paled with alarm. She expected, then and there, to be accused with the heinous offence of having picked strawberries without permission in Mr. Bob Buckham's field!

"Oh! what a pretty girl!" cried the invalid. "Come here, my dear, and let me pinch those cheeks. You need not blush so; I'm sure you've been told you were pretty before—and I hope it hasn't spoiled you," and Mrs. Buckham laughed heartily.

"I should know you were little Theresa's sister," continued the lady, as Agnes tremblingly approached. "She will be just such another when she gets to be as old as you, I am sure.

"And of course, this is Ruth," and she welcomed the oldest Corner House girl, too. "Four such splendid girls must make their mother's heart glad."

"I hope we did make her glad when she was with us," Ruth said quietly. "But we have no mother now; and no father."

"Oh, my dear!" cried the invalid, in quite a shocked tone. "I had no idea——"

"We miss our mother and our father. Even Dot can remember them both," said Ruth, still calmly. "But it happened so long ago that we do not cry about it any more—do we, girls?"

As the oldest sister spoke, the other three seemed to be involuntarily drawn to her. Dot took one hand and snuggled it against her soft, dark cheek. Tess put both arms about Ruth's neck and warmly kissed her. Agnes already had her arm around her elder sister's waist.

"I see," said Mrs. Buckham, with sudden appreciation. "The others do not miss the lost and gone mother, for a very good reason. I am sure you have done your duty, Ruth Kenway."

"I have tried to," Ruth said simply. "And they have all been good children, and helped."

"I ain't a doubt of it—I ain't a doubt of it," repeated Mrs. Buckham, briskly.

Agnes was watching the changing expression of the old lady's face, wondering if—as Neale had said—Mr. Buckham could not write, the invalid had sent in the list of girls' names to the principal of the Milton High. The old farmer himself might be unlettered; but Mrs. Buckham, Agnes was sure, must have had some book education.

Right at the invalid's hand, indeed, were two shelves fastened under the window sill, filled with books—mostly of a religious character. And their bindings showed frequent handling.

Posy brought in the steaming tea urn. "Come on now, folks," said Mrs. Buckham. "I'm just a honin' for a cup of comfort. That's what I call it. Tea is my favorite tipple—and I expect I'm just as eager for it as a poor drunkard is after liquor. Dear me! I never could blame them that has the habit for drink. I love my cup of comfort too well."

Posy was putting Tess and Dot into their chairs. The farmer awoke from his brown study, got up, stretched himself, and, with a smile, wheeled his wife's chair to the table.

"There ye be, Marm," he said. "All right?"

"All right, Bob," she assured him.

"Yes," the farmer said, turning to the children with a broader smile, "you ask your friend, Mrs. Eland, if she's related to Lemuel Aden. Seems to me she is his brother Abe's darter. Lem was a sharper; but Abe was a right out an' out——"

"Now, Bob!" interposed his wife. "That's all gone and done for."

"Well, so 'tis, Marm. But I can't never forget it. I was a boy and my marm was a widder woman. The five hundred dollars was all we had—every cent we had in the world," he added, looking about at the interested faces of his visitors.

"Abe Aden was a lawyer, or suthin' like that. He was a dabster at most things, includin' horse-tradin'. My father had put all the money he had in the world in Abe's hands, in some trade or other. We tried to git it back when father was kill't so sudden in the sawmill.

"Just erbout then Abe got inter trouble in a horse-trade. He was a good deal of a Gyp—so 'twas said. He left everything in Lem's hands and skedaddled out West. But he didn't leave no five hundred dollars in Lem's hands for us—no, sir!" and the old man shook his head ruminatively.

"No, sir. He likely got away with that five hundred to pay his fare, and so escaped jail."

"You don't know that, Bob," said his wife, gravely.

"No. I don't know it. But I know that my marm and I suffered all that winter because of losin' the five hundred. I was only a boy. I hadn't got my growth. She overworked because of that rascal's dishonesty, and it broke her down and killed her. I loved my marm," he added simply.

"'Course you did—'course you did, Bob," said his wife, briskly. Then she smiled about at the tableful of young folk, and confessed: "He begun callin' me 'marm,' like he did his mother, right away when we was married. She'd been dead since he was a little boy, and I considered it the sweetest compliment Bob could pay me. I've been 'marm' to him ever since."

"You sure have," declared Mr. Buckham, stoutly. "But that ain't bringin' my poor old marm back—nor the five hundred dollars. We never did hear direct from Abe Aden; but by and by a leetle gal wandered back here to the neighborhood. Said she was Abe's darter. He and her mother was lost in a big fire in some Western city; and she'd lost her sister, too."

"Poor child!" sighed the old lady. "You couldn't hold a grudge against the child, Bob."

"Who says I done so?" demanded the farmer. "No, sir! I never even seed the child more'n once or twice. But I know her name was Marion. And I heard her tell her story. The Chicago fire was a nine days' wonder, and this fire the gal's parents were lost in, was much similar, I should say. She'd seen her father and mother and the house they lived in, all swept away together—in a moment, almost. She and her sister escaped, but were separated in the refugees' camp and she couldn't never find the other child again. This Marion was old enough to remember about her Uncle Lem, and where he used to live; so the Relief Committee sent her here—glad ter git rid of her on sech easy terms, I s'pose. But Lem Aden had drapped out o' sight before then, and none of us folks knowed where he'd gone to."

"And that little girl was Mrs. Eland?" Ruth ventured to ask, for the farmer's remembrances of old times did not interest the little girls. Posy was heaping their plates with good things to eat. The picnic dinner in the woods had been forgotten.

"Yes. I reckon so," Mr. Buckham said, in answer to Ruth's inquiry. "She was kep' to help by some good people around here—just as we took Posy, marm and me. The child drifted away later. She got some schoolin'. I guess she went to a hospital and l'arned to be a nurse. Then she married a man named Eland, but he was sickly. I dunno as she ever did see her Uncle Lem."

CHAPTER XI

THE STRAWBERRY MARK

At the time when she had led the raid of the basket ball team and their friends upon Mr. Buckham's strawberry patch, she had been inspired by mere thoughtlessness and high spirits. The idea that she was trespassing—actually stealing—never entered her helter-skelter thoughts until afterward.

The field was so large, there were so many berries, and she and her mates took so few, that it really did not seem like stealing to thoughtless Agnes—no, indeed! It was just a prank.

And now to hear Bob Buckham express his horror of a thief!

"And that's what I am!" thought the bitterly repentant Agnes. "No, not a thief now. But I was at the time I took those berries. I am awfully sorry that I did such a thing. I—I wish I could tell him so."

That thought took fast hold upon the girl's mind. Her appreciation of the enormity of her offence had not been so great before—not even when Mr. Marks, the principal of the Milton High School, was talking so seriously to the girls about their frolic.

Then she had felt mainly the keen disappointment the punishment for her wrong-doing had brought. Not to be allowed to take part in the play which she felt sure would be enacted by the pupils of the Milton schools for the benefit of the Women's and Children's Hospital was a bitter disappointment, and that thought filled her mind.

Now she felt a different pang—far different. Shame for her act, and sorrow for the wrong she had done, bore Agnes' spirit down. Little wonder that she was all but dumb, and that her flowerlike face was overcast.

Tea was over and Mr. Buckham drew his wife's wheel-chair back to its usual place by the window. The light was fading even there, and Ruth said that they must start for home.

"Don't run away, sis," said the old farmer. "Marm and me don't have many visitors like you; an' we're glad to have ye."

"I fear that Mrs. MacCall will be afraid for us if we remain away much after dark," Ruth said cheerfully. She had already explained about Mrs. MacCall and Aunt Sarah, and even about Uncle Rufus.

"But we all have had such a nice time," Ruth added. "I know we shall only be too glad to come again."

"That's a good word," declared the invalid. "You can't come too often."

"Thank you," said Ruth. "If Neale will get the ponies ready——"

"And while he's doin' so, I'll take a look at that dog's ear again," said Mr. Buckham, cheerfully. "Wouldn't want nothin' bad to happen to such a brave dog as Tom Jonah."

"He's layin' out behind my kitchen stove, and he behaves like a Christian," Posy declared.

"He's a gentleman, Tom Jonah is," said Tess, proudly. "It says so on his collar," and she proceeded to tell the good-natured maid-of-all-work Tom Jonah's history—how he had first come to the old Corner House, and all that he had done, and how his old master had once unsuccessfully tried to win him back.

"But he wouldn't leave us at all. Would he, Dot?" she concluded.

"Of course not," said the smallest girl. "Why should he? Aren't we just as nice to him as we can be? And he sleeps in the kitchen when it's cold, for Mrs. MacCall says he's too old to take his chances out of doors these sharp nights."

"That's very thoughtful of your Mrs. MacCall, I do allow," agreed the jolly invalid. "And do you suppose she will get your doll's cloak done in time for your call on Mrs. Eland?"

"My Alice-doll's cloak? I do hope so," said Dot, with a sigh of anxiety.

"Wouldn't you go to call on the lady without her, if the cloak shouldn't be done?" asked the farmer's wife, much amused.

"Oh, no! I couldn't do that," said Dot, gravely. "You see, I promised her."

"Who, Mrs. Eland?"

"No, ma'am. My Alice-doll. I told her she should go with us. You see," said the smallest Corner House girl, "she was with us when we made the acquaintance of Mrs. Eland—Tess and me. And my Alice-doll liked her just as well as Tess and me. So there you are!"

"I see," agreed Mrs. Buckham, quite seriously. "You couldn't disappoint the child."

"Oh, no indeed!" said Dot. "I wouldn't want to! You see—she's not very strong. She hasn't been since that time she was buried alive."

"Buried alive!" gasped the lady in horror and surprise.

"Yes, ma'am. With the dried apples."

"Buried with dried apples?" repeated Mrs. Buckham, her wonder growing. "What for?"

"It was a most awful cat's-triumph," said Dot, shaking her head, and very, very solemn, "and it makes my Alice-doll very nervous even to hear it talked about. If she were here I wouldn't mention it——"

"What? What did you say, child?" gasped Mrs. Buckham. "About a cat, I mean, my dear?"

"She means 'catastrophe,'" said Tess, coming to the rescue. "I really wish, Dot Kenway, that you wouldn't use words that you can't use!"

Mrs. Buckham's mellow laughter rang out and she hugged the smallest Corner House girl close to her side.

"Never mind, honey," she said. "If you want to make up a new word, you shall—so there!"

Meanwhile Agnes had followed the farmer out into the big kitchen. The old man sat in a low chair and pulled Tom Jonah tenderly between his huge knees, till the dog laid his muzzle in his lap, looking up at the man confidingly out of his big, brown eyes.

Mr. Buckham had put on a pair of silver-bowed spectacles and had the salve-box in his hand. He laid the badly torn ear carefully upon his knee and began to apply the salve with a gentle, if calloused, forefinger.

"This'll take the pizen out, old feller," said the farmer, crooningly.

Tom Jonah whined, but did not move. The application of the salve hurt the dog, but he did not pull away from the man's hand.

"He sure is a gentleman, jest as the little gal says," chuckled Bob Buckham.

He looked so kindly and humorously up at Agnes standing before him, that the troubled Corner House girl almost broke out into weeping. She gripped her fingers into her palms until the nails almost cut the tender flesh. Her heart swelled and the tears stung her eyelids when she winked them back. Agnes was a passionate, stormy-tempered child. This was a crisis in her young life. She had always been open and frank, but nobody will ever know what it cost her to blurt out her first words to Mr. Bob Buckham.

"Oh, Mr. Buckham! do you hate anybody who steals from you?"

"Heh?" he said, startled by her vehemence. "Do I hate 'em?"

"Yes."

"Goodness me, gal! I hope not. I'm a communin' Christian in our church, an' I hope I don't have no hatred in my heart against none o' my fellermen. But I hate some things that poor, weak, human critters does—yes, ma'am! 'Specially some of the ornery things Bob Buckham's done."

"Oh, Mr. Buckham! you never stole," blurted out Agnes.

"Ya-as I have. That's why I hate stealin' so, I reckon," said the farmer, slowly.

"Not, really?" cried Agnes.

"Yep. 'Twas a-many year ago. Marm and me had jest come on this farm. She was young an' spry then, God bless her! And it was well she was. Bob Buckham wouldn't never have owned the place and stacked up the few dollars he has in bank, if it hadn't been for her spryness.

"I'd jest got my first strawberry patch inter bearin'——"

"Oh! Strawberries!" gasped Agnes.

"Ya-as'm. Them's what I've made most of my money on. I only had a small patch. They was fust-class berries—most on 'em. They packed well, and we had ter put 'em into round, covered, quart boxes to ship in them days. I got a repertation with the local shipper for havin' A-number-one fruit.

"Wal! Marm an' me was mighty hard up. We was dependin' on the re-turns from the strawberry crop to pay mortgage, int'rest and taxes. And one end of the strawberry patch—the late end—had the meachinest lookin' berries ye ever seen."

Old Bob chuckled at the remembrance. His gaze sought the firelight flashing through the bars of the grate of the big cookstove.

"Wal!" he said. "That was a bad time. We needin' the money so, and the berry crop likely to be short of what we figgered. Them little old barries at that last end of the patch began to ripen up fast; but I see they wouldn't bring me no price at all—not if the shipper seed 'em.

"If I did," he said, with a grin, "it didn't spile my appetite. Not then. Not that day. I seen the carload shipped and never said a word. I went home. I eat my dinner just as hearty as ever and made preparations to work the next day's load the same way. Ye see, marm, she didn't know a thing about it.

"Wal!" continued the old man, "it come bed-time and we went to bed. I was allus a sound sleeper. Minute my head touched the husk piller, that minute I begun ter snore. I worked hard and I slept hard.

"But—funny thing—I didn't git to sleep. No reason—'parently. Wasn't worried. I was kinder tickled at what I'd done, and the slick way I'd done it. I never had cheated before to my knowledge; but I was happy at the thought of that extry ten dollars, and the other extry money that was ter foller."

"And—and didn't your conscience trouble you?" asked Agnes, wonderingly.

"Nope, not a mite. I was jest as quiet and contented as though they'd left a conscience out o' me when I was built," and the old man chuckled again, heartily.

"Marm says she believes more folks lay awake at night because of empty stomachs than from guilty consciences, an' so she always has a plate of crackers by her side o' the bed. Wal! I lay as calm as a spring mornin'; but after a while I gotter countin' sheep jumpin' through a gap in a stone-fence, and had jest about lulled myself ter sleep, when seems ter me there was a hand writin' on the wall opposite the foot of our bed. I didn't see the hand, mind you; but I seen the writin'. It was in good, big print-text, too, or I couldn't have read it at all—for you know I never had no schoolin', an' I kin jest barely write my name to this day.

"But that print showed up plain as plain! And it was jest one word—kinder 'luminated on the wall. It was strawberry. That's all, jest strawberry. You'd think it would ha' been somethin' like thief or cheat. Nope. It was jest strawberry. But I had to lay there all night with my eyes propped open, seeing that word on the wall.

"When daylight come it was still there. I seen it when I was dressin'. I carried it with me out to the stable. Everywhere I looked against a wall, I seed that word. If I hung my head and looked at the ground, it was there.

"I knowed if what I'd done about those meachin' little berries was ever knowed in the community, like enough I'd never be called by my right name any more. They'd call me 'Strawberry Bob.' I knowed it. That was goin' to be my punishment fur stealin'."

"Oh, Mr. Bob!" groaned Agnes, much moved by his earnestness.

"It's my belief," said old Bob Buckham, "that we don't hafter wait till the hereafter ter git our punishment for wrong-doin' here. I reckon most times we git it right here and now.

"Wal! I went erbout all that forenoon seein' strawberry marked up everywhere. I snum! it was right acrosst marm's forehead when I looked at her—and there warn't no other mark there in them days, you may be sure.

"I started in to pack berries jest the same as I did the day before. Then, of a sudden, I says to myself, 'Bob Buckham, you derned thief! Stop it! Ten dollars a day won't pay you for bein' called "Strawberry Bob"!'

"So I boxed them poor berries separate and I told the shipper what I'd done the day before. I told him to take ten dollars off my order. He grinned at me.

"'There was a railroad wreck yesterday, Bob, and our car went to pot. I'll git full damages from the railroad company.'

"'Not for them berries of mine, Silas,' I told him. He was Silas Wales. 'You de-duct what my berries cost you in full, and I'll turn back my hull order to ye!'

"He hummed and hawed; but he done it. He axed me was I havin' a hard time meetin' the int'rest on my mortgage, an' I told him the trewth. When the mortgage come due that year he come 'round and offered to let me have the money at a cheaper rate than I'd been payin', an' all the time I wanted. Ye see, that was a cheap way of gittin' a reperation for bein' honest, after all."

"And didn't you see the strawberry mark after that?" sighed Agnes.

"Nope. Nor they never called me 'Strawberry Bob,' though I've been raisin' more berries than most folks in this locality, ever since," said Bob Buckham.

"Oh, Mr. Buckham!" exclaimed Agnes. "I ought to be called 'Strawberry Agnes'!"

"Heh? What for?" asked the startled farmer.

"Because I stole berries! I stole them from you! Last May!" gulped the girl. "You know when those girls raided your field? I was one of them. I was the first one over the fence and picked the first berry. I—I'm awfully sorry; but I really didn't think how wrong it was at the time. And I wish I'd come to you and told you before, instead of waiting until the principal of our school—Mr. Marks—and everybody, knew about it."

"Sho, honey!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, softly. "Was you one o' them gals? I'd no idee. Wal! say no more about it. What you took didn't break me," and he laughed. "And I won't tell nobody," he added, patting Agnes' shoulder.

As Agnes dried her eyes before joining her sisters and Neale O'Neil at the door, she thought that it was rather unnecessary for the farmer to make that promise. When he had caused the list of girls' names to be sent to the school principal, he had assured her punishment.

While Bob Buckham was saying to himself: "Now, that's a leetle gal after my own heart. She's a hull sight nicer than that other one. And she's truly repentant, too."