Kitabı oku: «The Cattle-Baron's Daughter», sayfa 10

XIV
TORRANCE’S WARNING

In another moment the horseman pulled up, and sat motionless in his saddle with his head turned towards the house. Hetty could see him silhouetted, shapeless and shadowy in his big fur-coat, against the whiteness of the snow, and the relief she felt betrayed itself in her voice as she turned to Miss Schuyler.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s Larry. There will be no more trouble now.”

Flora Schuyler laughed a little breathless laugh, for though she also felt the confidence her companion evinced, the strain had told on her.

“Of course,” she said, “he knew you wanted him. There are men like that.”

It was a simple tribute, but Hetty thrilled with pride. Larry was at least consistent, and now, as it had been in the days both looked back upon, he had come when she needed him. She also recognized even then that the fact that he is generally to be found where he is wanted implies a good deal in the favour of any man.

And now half-seen objects moved out from behind barn and stable, and the horseman turned towards them. His voice rose sharply and commandingly.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

There was no answer for several moments, and then a man stepped forward gesticulating fiercely as he commenced a tirade that was less than half intelligible. Larry checked him with a lifted hand.

“There’s a good deal of that I can’t quite understand, and the rest doesn’t seem to fit this case,” he said, with a laugh that had more effect upon some of those who heard it than a flow of eloquence would have had. “Boys, we have no use for worrying about the meanness of European kings and folks of that kind. If you have brought any along I’d sooner listen to sensible Americans.”

Another man stepped forward, and there was no doubt about his accent, though his tone was deprecatory.

“Well, it just comes to this,” he said. “Torrance and the cattle-men have done their best to starve us and freeze us out, and, since he has made it plain that there’s no room for both of us, somebody has got to go. Now, we have come a long way and we mean to stay. We’re not looking for trouble, but we want our rights.”

There was a murmur of encouragement from the rest, but again Larry’s laugh had its effect. “Then you’re taking a kind of curious way of getting them,” he said. “I don’t know that trying to burn folks’ houses ever did anybody much good, and it’s quite likely to bring a regiment of United States cavalry down on you. Mr. Torrance, I fancied I heard firing. Have you anybody hurt inside?”

“One of your men,” said Torrance drily. “We hope to pull him round, and let the Sheriff have him.”

It was not a conciliatory answer, and came near undoing what Grant had accomplished; but the grim old cattle-baron was not the man to propitiate an enemy. A murmur followed it, and somebody said, “Boys, you hear him! Bring along that wagon. We’re going in.”

The form of speech was Western, but the voice was guttural, and when there was a rattle of wheels Grant suddenly changed his tone.

“Stop right there,” he said. “Throw every truss of hay down. The man who holds off when I tell him what to do is going to have trouble with the executive.”

It was a bold venture, and any sign of effort or unevenness of inflection would have rendered it futile, but the voice was sharp and ringing, and the fashion in which the horseman flung up his arm commanding. It was, also, tactful, for some of those who heard it had been drilled into unreflecting obedience, and there is in the native American the respect for a duly accredited leader, which discipline has further impressed upon the Teuton. Still, those who watched from the window felt that this was the crisis, and tightened their numbed fingers on the rifles, knowing that if the horseman failed they would shortly need them again. None of them, however, made any other movement, and Miss Schuyler, who, grasping Hetty’s hand, saw the dim figures standing rigid and intent, could only hear the snapping of the stove.

“Hetty,” she gasped, “I shall do something silly in another moment.”

The tension only lasted a moment or two. A man sprang up on the pole of the wagon, and a truss of hay went down. Another followed, and then, men who had also felt the strain and now felt it a relief to do anything, clustered about the wagon. In a few minutes it was empty, and the men who had been a mob turned to the one who had changed them into an organized body.

“What do you want now?” asked one of them.

“Run that wagon back where you got it from,” said Larry.

It was done, and when the clustering figures vanished amidst a rattle of wheels Torrance laid aside his rifle and sat down on the table.

“I guess there’ll be no more trouble, boys. That’s a thing there’s not many men could have done,” he added.

His daughter also sat down in the nearest chair, with Flora Schuyler’s hand still within her own. She had been very still while the suspense lasted, but she was trembling now, and her voice had a little quiver in it as she said, “Wasn’t he splendid, Flo?”

It was some minutes before Grant and the other men came back again, and fragments of what he said were audible. “Then, you can pick out four men, and we’ll hear them at the committee. I have two or three questions to ask you by and by. Half a dozen of you keep a look-out. The rest can get into the stable out of the frost.”

The men dispersed, and Grant turned towards the house. “I don’t think you need have any further anxiety, and you can shut that window if you want to, Mr. Torrance.”

Torrance laughed. “I don’t know that I’ve shown any yet.”

“I hope you haven’t felt it,” said Grant. “It is cold out here, and I’m willing to come in and talk to you.”

Somebody had moved the box away from the lamp, and Clavering’s face showed up against the wavering shadow as he turned towards his leader. Flora Schuyler saw a little unpleasant smile on his lips as he pointed suggestively to the men with rifles he had sent towards the door.

“That would suit us, sir,” he said.

Torrance understood him, for he shook his head impatiently. “It wouldn’t pay. There would be too many of his friends wondering what had become of him. Get the door open and tell him to come in. Light the big lamps, somebody.”

The door was opened, and, as if in confirmation of Torrance’s warning, a voice rose up outside. “We have let him go, but if you try any meanness, or he isn’t ready when we want him, we’ll pull the place down,” it said.

Larry walked out of the darkness into the blaze of light, and only smiled a little when the great door swung to behind him and somebody brought the window banging down. Two men with rifles stepped between him and the former; but if Torrance had intended to impress him, he had apparently failed, for he moved forward with quiet confidence. The fur cap he held in his hand was white, and the great fur coat stood out from his body stiff with frost, while Hetty winced when she saw the pallor of his face. It was evident that it was not without a strenuous effort he had made the mob subservient to him.

But his eyes were grave and steady, in spite of the weariness in them, and as he passed the girls he made a little formal inclination with his head. He stopped in front of Torrance, who rose from his seat on the table, and for a moment the two men looked at one another. Both stood very straight, one lean, and dark, and commanding, with half-contemptuous anger in his black eyes; the other of heavier frame and brown of skin and hair save where what he had done had left its stamp of pallor. Yet, different as they were in complexion and feature, it seemed to Miss Schuyler, who watched them intently, that there was a curious, indefinite resemblance between them. They were of the same stock and equally resolute, each ready, it seemed, to stake all he had on what he held the right.

Flora Schuyler, who had trained her observation, also read what they felt in their faces, and saw in that of Torrance grudging approval tempered by scorn of the man who had trampled on the traditions of those he sprang from. She fancied that Larry recognized this and that it stung him, though he would not show that it did, and his attitude pleased her most. It was unyielding, but there was a deference that became him in it.

“I am sorry I did not arrive soon enough to save you this inconvenience, sir,” he said.

Torrance smiled grimly, and there was a hardness in his voice. “You have been here a good many times, Larry, and we did our best for you. None of us fancied that you would repay us by coming back with a mob of rabble to pull the place down.”

Grant winced perceptibly. “Nobody is more sorry than I am, sir.”

“Aren’t you a trifle late?”

“I came as soon as I got word.”

Torrance made a little gesture of impatience. “That’s not what I mean. There is very little use in being sorry now. Before the other fools you joined started there talking there was quietness and prosperity in this country. The men who had made it what it is got all, but nothing more than they were entitled to, and one could enjoy what he had worked for and sleep at night. This was not good enough for you – and this is what you have made of it.”

He stretched out his arm with a forceful gesture, pointing to the men with rifles, the two white-faced girls, and the splinters on the wall, then dropped his hand, and Larry’s eyes rested on the huddled figure lying by the stove. He moved towards it, and bent down without a word, and it was at least five minutes before he came back again, his face dark and stern.

“You have done nothing for him?” he said.

“No,” said Torrance, “we have not. I guess nature knows what’s best for him, and I didn’t see anything to be gained by rousing him with brandy to start the bleeding.”

“Well, first of all, I want that man.”

“You can have him. We had meant him for the Sheriff, but what you did just now lays me in your debt, and I would not like to feel I owed you anything.”

Grant made a little gesture. “I don’t think I have quite deserved that, sir. I owe you a good deal, and it makes what I have to do harder still. Can’t you remember that there was a time when you were kind to me?”

“No,” said Torrance drily. “I don’t want to be reminded when I have done foolish things. I tried to warn you, but you would not listen to me, that the trail you have started on will take you a good deal farther than you meant to go. If you have anything to tell me, I would sooner talk business. Are you going to bring your friends round here at night again?”

“They came without me, and, if I can help it, will not come back. This thing will be gone into, and the leaders punished by our committee. Now, are you willing to stop the intimidation of the storekeepers, which has brought about this trouble, and let us get provisions in the town? I can offer you something in exchange.”

“No,” said Torrance. “Do what suits you best. I can make no terms with you. If it hadn’t been for my foolishness in sending the boys off with the cattle, very few of your friends would have got away from Cedar Range to-night.”

“I’ll take my man away. I can thank you for that at least,” was Grant’s answer.

He moved to the door and opened it, and three men came in. They did his bidding, and all made way for them when they tramped out unsteadily with their burden. Then, he turned once more to Torrance with his fur cap in his hand.

“I am going now, sir, and it is hard to tell what may happen before we meet again. We have each got a difficult row to hoe, and I want to leave you on the best terms I can.”

Torrance looked at him steadily, and Grant returned it with a curious gravity, though there were fearless cattle-men at Cedar Range who did not care to meet its owner’s gaze when he regarded them in that fashion. With a just perceptible gesture he directed the younger man’s attention to the red splashes on the floor.

“That alone,” he said quietly, “would stand between you and me. We made this land rich and peaceful, but that did not please you and the rest, who had not sense to see that while human nature’s what it is, there’s no use worrying about what you can’t have when you have got enough. You went round sowing trouble, and by and by you’ll have to reap it. You brought in the rabble, and were going to lead them, and make them farmers; but now they will lead you where you don’t want to go, and when you have given them all you have, turn and trample on you. With the help of the men who are going back on their own kind, they may get us down, but when that time comes there will not be a head of cattle left, or a dollar in the treasury.”

“I can only hope you are mistaken, sir,” said Grant.

“I have lived quite a long while, but I have never seen the rabble keep faith with anyone longer than it suited them,” the older man said. “Any way, that is not the question. You will be handed to the Sheriff if you come here again. I have nothing more to tell you, and this is, I hope, the last time I shall ever speak to you.”

Miss Schuyler watched Grant closely, but though his face was drawn and set, she saw only a respect, which, if it was assumed, still became him in his bearing as he turned away. As he passed the girls he bent his head, and Hetty, whose cheeks were flushed, rose with a formal bow, though her eyes shone suspiciously, but Flora Schuyler stepped forward and held out her hand.

“Mr. Torrance can’t object to two women thanking you for what you have done; and if he does, I don’t greatly mind,” she said.

Torrance only smiled, but the warm bronze seemed to have returned to Larry’s face as he passed on. Flora Schuyler had thanked him, but he had seen what was worth far more to him in Hetty’s eyes, and knew that it was only loyalty to one who had the stronger claim that held her still. After the door closed behind him there was once more a curious stillness in the hall until Torrance went out with his retainers. A little later Clavering found the girls in another room.

“You seem quite impressed, Miss Schuyler,” he said.

“I am,” said Flora Schuyler. “I have seen a man who commands one’s approbation – and an American.”

Clavering laughed. “Then, they’re not always quite the same thing?”

“No,” Flora Schuyler said coldly. “That was one of the pleasant fancies I had to give up a long time ago.”

“I would like a definition of the perfected American,” said Clavering.

Miss Schuyler yawned. “Can’t you tell him, Hetty? I once heard you talk quite eloquently on that subject.”

“I’ll try,” said Hetty. “It’s the man who wants to give his country something, and not get the most he can out of it. The one who goes round planting seeds that will grow and bear fruit, even if it is long after he is there to eat it. No country has much use for the man who only wants to reap.”

Clavering assented, but there was a sardonic gleam in his eyes. “Well,” he said reflectively, “there was once a man who planted dragon’s teeth, and you know what kind of crop they yielded him.”

“He knew what he was doing,” said Flora Schuyler. “The trouble is that now few men know a dragon’s tooth when they see it.”

Clavering laughed. “Then the ones who don’t should be stopped right off when they go round planting anything.”

XV
HETTY’S BOUNTY

It was a clear, cold afternoon, and Hetty, driving back from Allonby’s ranch, sent the team at a gallop down the dip to the Cedar Bridge. The beaten trail rang beneath the steel shoes of the rocking sleigh, the birches streamed up blurred together out of the hollow, and Flora Schuyler felt the wind sting her cheeks like the lash of a whip. The coldness of it dimmed her eyes, and she had only a hazy and somewhat disconcerting vision of a streak of snow that rolled back to the horses’ feet amidst the whirling trees. It was wonderfully exhilarating – the rush of the lurching sleigh, the hammering of the hoofs, and the scream of the wind – but Miss Schuyler realized that it was also unpleasantly risky as she remembered the difficult turn before one came to the bridge.

She decided, however, that there was nothing to be gained by pointing this out to her companion, for Hetty, who sat swaying a little in the driving seat, had been in a somewhat curious mood since the attack on Cedar Range, and unusually impatient of advice or remonstrance. Indeed, Flora Schuyler fancied that it was the restlessness she had manifested once or twice of late which impelled her to hurl the sleigh down into the hollow at that reckless pace. So she said nothing, until the streak of snow broke off close ahead, and there were only trees in front of them. Then, a wild lurch cut short the protest she made, and she gasped as they swung round the bend and flashed across the bridge. The trail, however, led steeply upwards now, and Hetty, laughing, dropped the reins upon the plodding horses’ necks.

“Didn’t that remind you of the Chicago Limited?” she said.

“I was wondering,” said Miss Schuyler breathlessly, “if you had any reason for trying to break your neck.”

“Well,” said Hetty, with a twinkle in her eyes, “I felt I had to do something a little out of the usual, and it was really safe enough. Everybody feels that way now and then, and I couldn’t well work it off by quarrelling with you, or going out and talking to the boys as my father does. I don’t know a better cure than a gallop or a switchback in a sleigh.”

“Some folks find it almost as soothing to tell their friends what is worrying them, and I scarcely think it’s more risky,” said Miss Schuyler.

Hetty’s face became grave. “Well,” she said, “one can talk to you, and I have been worried, Flo. I know that it is quite foolish, but I can’t help it. I came back to see my father through the trouble, and I’m going to; but while I know that he’s ever so much wiser than I am, some of the things he has to do hurt me. It’s our land, and we’re going to keep it; but it’s not nice to think of the little children starving in the snow.”

This, Miss Schuyler decided, was perfectly correct, so far as it went; but she also felt tolerably certain that, while it was commendable, Hetty’s loyalty to her father would be strenuously tested, and did not alone account for her restlessness.

“And there was nothing else?” she said.

“No,” said Hetty, a little too decisively. “Of course! Any way, now I have told you we are not going to worry about these things to-day, and I drove fast partly because the trail is narrow, and one generally meets somebody here. Did it ever strike you, Flo, that if there’s anyone you know in a country that has a bridge in it, you will, if you cross it often enough, meet him there?”

“No,” and Miss Schuyler smiled satirically, “it didn’t, though one would fancy it was quite likely. I, however, remember that we met Larry here not very long ago. That Canadian blanket suit shows you off quite nicely, Hetty. It is especially adapted to your kind of figure.”

Hetty flicked the horses, then pulled them up again, and Miss Schuyler laughed as a sleigh with two men in it swung out from beneath the trees in front of them.

“This is, of course, a coincidence,” she said.

Hetty coloured. “Don’t be foolish, Flo,” she said. “How could I know he was coming?”

Flora Schuyler did not answer, and Hetty was edging her horses to the side of the trail, in which two sleighs could scarcely pass, when a shout came down.

“Wait. We’ll pull up and lead our team round.”

In another minute Grant stepped out of his sleigh, and would have passed if Hetty had not stopped him. She sat higher than her companion, and probably knew that the Canadian blanket costume, with its scarlet trimmings, became her slender figure. The crimson toque also went well with the clustering dark hair and dark eyes, and there was a brightness in the latter which was in keeping with the colour the cold wind had brought into the delicate oval face. The man glanced at her a moment, and then apparently found that a trace required his attention.

“I am glad we met you, Larry,” said the girl. “Flo thanked you the night you came to Cedar, and I wanted to, but, while you know why I couldn’t, I would not like you to think it was very unkind of me. Whatever my father does is right, you see.”

“Of course,” said Grant gravely. “You have to believe it, Hetty.”

Hetty’s eyes twinkled. “That was very nice of you. Then you must be wrong.”

“Well,” said Grant, with a merry laugh, “it is quite likely that I am now and then. One can only do the best he can, and to be right all the time is a little too much to expect from any man.”

Miss Schuyler, who was talking to Breckenridge, turned and smiled, and Hetty said, “Then, that makes it a little easier for me to admit that the folks I belong to go just a little too far occasionally. Larry, I hate to think of the little children going hungry. Are there many of them?”

Grant’s face darkened for a moment. “I’m afraid there are quite a few – and sick ones, too, lying with about half enough to cover them in sod-hovels.”

Hetty shuddered and her eyes grew pitiful, for since the grim early days hunger and want had been unknown in the cattle country. “If I want to do something for them it can’t be very wrong,” she said. “Larry, you will take a roll of bills from me, and buy them whatever will make it a little less hard for them?”

“No,” said Grant quietly, “I can’t, Hetty. Your father gives you that money, and we have our own relief machinery.”

The girl laid her hand upon his arm appealingly. “I have a little my mother left me, and it was hers before she married my father. Can’t you understand? I am with my father, and would not lift my finger to help you and the homestead-boys against him, but it couldn’t do anybody any harm if I sent a few things to hungry children. You have just got to take those dollars, Larry.”

“Then I dare not refuse,” said Grant, after thinking a moment. “They need more than we can give them. But you can’t send me the dollars.”

“No,” said Hetty, “and I have none with me now. But if a responsible man came to the bluff to-morrow night at eight o’clock, my maid could slip down with the wallet – you must not come. It would be too dangerous. My father, and one or two of the rest, are very bitter against you.”

“Well,” said Grant, smiling gravely, “a responsible man will be there. There are folks who will bless you, Hetty.”

“You must never tell them, or anybody,” the girl insisted.

Grant said nothing further, and led his team past; but Hetty noticed the shadow in his bronzed face and the wistfulness in his eyes. Then, she shook the reins, and as the horses plodded up the slope Miss Schuyler fancied that she sighed.

In the meanwhile Grant got into his sleigh, and Breckenridge, who had been vanquished by Miss Schuyler in an exchange of badinage, found him somewhat silent during the journey to Fremont ranch. He retired to rest soon after they reached it, and set out again before daylight the next morning, and it was late at night when he came back very weary, with his garments stiff with frost. The great bare room where Breckenridge awaited him was filled with a fusty heat, and as he came in, partly dazed by the change of temperature, Grant did not see the other man who sat amidst the tobacco-smoke beside the glowing stove. He sank into a hide chair limply, and when Breckenridge glanced at him inquiringly, with numbed fingers dragged a wallet out of his pocket.

“Yes,” he said, “I got the dollars. I don’t know that it was quite the square thing, but with Harper’s wife and the Dutchman’s children ’most starving in the hollow, I felt I had to take them.”

Breckenridge made a little warning gesture, and the man behind the stove, reaching forward, picked up a packet that had dropped unnoticed by the rest when Grant took out the wallet.

“You seem kind of played out, Larry, and I guess you didn’t know you dropped the thing,” he said.

Grant blinked at him; for a man who has driven for many hours in the cold of the Northwest is apt to suffer from unpleasant and somewhat bewildering sensations when his numbed brain and body first throw off the effect of the frost.

“No,” he said unevenly. “Let me alone a minute. I didn’t see you.”

The man, who was one of the homesteaders’ leaders in another vicinity, sat still with the packet in his hand until, perhaps without any intention of reading it, his eyes rested on the address. Then he sat upright suddenly and stared at Grant.

“Do you know what you have got here, Larry?” he asked.

Grant stretched out his hand and took the packet, then laid it upon the table with the address downwards.

“It’s something that dropped out of the wallet,” he said.

The other man laughed a little, but his face was intent. “Oh, yes, that’s quite plain; but if I know the writing it’s a letter with something in it from Torrance to the Sheriff. There’s no mistaking the way he makes the ‘g.’ Turn it over and I’ll show you.”

Grant laid a brown hand on the packet. “No. Do you generally look at letters that don’t belong to you, Chilton?”

Breckenridge saw that Grant was recovering, and that the contemptuous manner of his question was intentional, and guessed that his comrade had intended to sting the other man to resentment, and so lead him from the point at issue. Chilton coloured, but he persisted.

“Well,” he said, “I guess that one belongs to the committee. I didn’t mean to look at the thing, but, now I’m sure of it, I have to do what I can for the boys who made me their executive. I don’t ask you how you got it, Larry.”

“I got it by accident.”

Chilton looked astonished, and almost incredulous. “Well, we needn’t worry over that. The question is, what you’re going to do with it?”

“I’m going to send it back.”

Chilton made a gesture of impatience. “That’s what you can’t do. As we know, the cattle-men had a committee at Cedar a day or two ago, and now here’s a packet stuffed with something going to the Sheriff. Doesn’t it strike you yet that it’s quite likely there’s a roll of dollar bills and a letter telling him what he has to do inside it?”

“Well?” said Grant, seeing that he must face the issue sooner or later.

“We don’t want their dollars, but that letter’s worth a pile of them to us. We could get it printed by a paper farther east, with an article on it that would raise a howl from everybody. There are one or two of them quite ready for a chance of getting a slap at the legislature, while there’s more than one man who would be glad to hawk it round the lobbies. Then his friends would have no more use for the Sheriff, and we might even get a commission sent down to straighten things up for us.”

“The trouble is that we can’t make any use of it,” said Grant.

“No?” said Chilton, and the men looked at each other steadily.

“No,” repeated Grant. “It wasn’t meant that I should get it, and I’m going to send it back.”

“Then, while I don’t want to make trouble, I’ll have to mention the thing to my committee.”

“You’ll do just what you believe is right. Any way, we’ll have supper now. It will be ready.”

Chilton stood still a moment. “You are quite straight with us in this?”

“Yes,” said Grant, “but I’m not going to give you that letter. Are you coming in to supper? It really wouldn’t commit you to anything.”

“I am,” said Chilton simply. “I have known you quite a long while, and your assurance is good enough for me; but you would have found it difficult to make other folks believe you.”

They sat down at table, and Larry smiled as he said, “It’s the first time I have seen your scruples spoil your appetite, Chilton, but I had a notion that you were not quite sure about taking any supper from me.”

“Well,” laughed Chilton, “that just shows how foolish a man can be, because the supper’s already right here inside me. When I came in Breckenridge got it for me. Still, I have driven a long way, and I can worry through another.”

He made a very creditable attempt, and when he had been shown to his room Grant glanced at Breckenridge.

“You know how I got the letter?”

“Yes,” said Breckenridge. “Miss Torrance must have inadvertently slipped it into the wallet. You couldn’t have done anything else, Larry; but the affair is delicate and will want some handling. How are you going to get the packet back?”

“Take it myself,” Grant said quietly.

It was ten o’clock the next night, and Hetty Torrance and Miss Schuyler sat talking in their little sitting-room. Torrance was away, but his married foreman, who had seen service in New Mexico, and his wife, slept in the house, and Cedar Range was strongly guarded. Now and then, the bitter wind set the door rattling, and there was a snapping in the stove; but when the gusts passed the ranch seemed very still, and Miss Schuyler could hear the light tread of the armed cow-boy who, perhaps to keep himself warm, paced up and down the hall below. There was another at a window in the corridor, and one or two more on guard in the stores and stables.

“Wasn’t Chris Allonby to have come over to-day?” asked Miss Schuyler.

“Yes,” said Hetty. “I’m sorry he didn’t. I have a letter for the Sheriff to give him, and wanted to get rid of the thing. It is important, and I fancy, from what my father told me, if any of the homestead-boys got it they could make trouble for us. Chris is to ride in with it and hand it to the Sheriff.”

“I wouldn’t like a letter of that kind lying round,” said Miss Schuyler. “Where did you put it, Hetty?”

Hetty laughed. “Where nobody would ever find it – under some clothes of mine. Talking about it makes one uneasy. Pull out the second drawer in the bureau, Flo.”

Miss Schuyler did so, and Hetty turned over a bundle of daintily embroidered linen. Then, her face grew very grave, she laid each article back again separately.

“Nothing there!” said Miss Schuyler.

Hetty’s fingers quivered. “Pull the drawer out, Flo. No. Never mind anything. Shake them out on the floor.”

It was done, and a litter of garments lay scattered about them, but no packet appeared, and Hetty sat down limply, very white in the face.

“It was there,” she said, “by the wallet with the dollars. It must have got inside somehow, and I sent the wallet to Larry. This is horrible, Flo.”

“Think!” said Miss Schuyler. “You couldn’t have put it anywhere else?”