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CHAPTER XX
STORMBOUND ON THE WAY

Bob would not have dismissed his misgivings so contentedly had he been able to see Betty just at that moment.

When she shook the dust of Bramble Farm from her feet, which she did literally at the boundary line on the main road, to the great delight of two curious robins and a puzzled chipmunk, she said firmly that it was forever. As she tramped along the road she kept looking back, hoping to hear the rattle of wheels and to see Bob and the sorrel coming after her. But she reached the crossroads without being overtaken.

Years ago some thoughtful person had taken the trouble to build a rude little seat around the four sides of the guidepost where the road to Laurel Grove and Glenside crossed, and in a nearby field was a boarded-up spring of ice-cold water, so that travelers, on foot and in motor-cars and wagons, made it a point to rest for a few minutes and refresh themselves there. Betty was a trifle embarrassed to find a group of men loitering about the guide-post when she came up to it. They were all strangers to her, but with the ready friendliness of the country, they nodded respectfully.

"Want to sit down a minute, Miss?" asked a gray-haired man civilly, standing up to make room for her. "Didn't expect to see so many idle farmers about on a clear morning, did you?"

Betty shook her head, smiling.

"I won't sit down, thank you," she said in her clear girlish voice. "I'll just get a drink of water and go on; I want to reach Glenside before noon."

"Glenside road's closed," announced one of the younger men, shortly.

"Closed!" echoed Betty. "Oh, no! I have to get there, I tell you."

Her quick, frightened glance fell on the man who had first spoken to her, and she appealed to him.

"The road isn't closed, is it?" she asked breathlessly. "That isn't why you're all here?"

"Now, now, there's nothing to worry your head about," answered the gray-haired farmer soothingly. "Jerry, here, is always a bit abrupt with his tongue. As a matter of fact, the road is closed; but if you don't mind a longer walk, you can make a detour and get to Glenside easily enough."

Betty gazed at him uncertainly.

"You see," he explained, "King Charles, the prize bull at Greenfields, the big dairy farm, got out this morning, and we suppose he is roaming up and down between here and Glenside. He's worth a mint of money, so they don't want to shoot him, and the dairy has offered a good reward for his safe return. He's got a famous temper, and no one would deliberately set out to meet him unarmed; so we're posted here to warn folks. A few automobiles took a chance and went on, but the horses and wagons and foot passengers take the road to Laurel Grove. You turn off to the left at the first road and follow that and it brings you into Glenside at the north end of town. You'll be all right."

"A girl shouldn't try to make it alone," objected another one of the group. "You take my advice, Sis, and wait till your father or brother can take you over in the buggy. Suppose you met a camp of Gypsies?"

"Oh, I'm not afraid," Betty assured him. "That is, not of people. But I don't know what in the world I should do if I met an angry bull. I'll take the detour, and everything will be all right. I'm used to walking."

The men repeated the directions again, to make sure she understood clearly. Then Betty drank a cup of the fresh, cold spring water, and bravely set off on the new road.

The gray-haired man came running after her.

"If it should storm," he cried, coming up with her, "don't run under a tree. Better stay out in the rain till you reach a house. You'll be safe in any farmhouse."

He meant safe as far as the kind of people she would meet were concerned, but Betty, who had never in her life feared any one, thought he referred to protection from the elements. She thanked him, and trudged on.

"I certainly am hungry," she said, after a half hour of tramping. "Now I know how Bob feels without a cent in his pocket. I'll have to ask Doctor Guerin for some money. I can't get along without a nickel. Uncle Dick must be awfully busy, or else he's sick. Otherwise he would surely let me hear from him."

When she came to an old apple orchard where the trees drooped over a crumbling stone wall, Betty had no scruples about filling the pockets and sleeves of her sweater with the apples that lay on the ground. Bob had told her that portions of trees that grew over the roadside were public property, and she intended to explain to the farmer, if she met him, how she had come to carry off some of his fruit. But she met no one and saw no house, and presently the rumble of distant thunder put all thoughts of apples out of her mind.

"My goodness!" She looked at the mountain of white clouds piling up with something like panic. "I haven't even come to the road that turns, and I just know this will be a hard thunderstorm. Mrs. Peabody said last week that the August storms are terrors. I'll run, and perhaps I'll come to a house."

Holding her sweater stuffed with apples in her arms, and jamming her hat firmly on her head, Betty flew down the road, bouncing over stones, jumping over, without a shudder, a mashed black-snake flattened out in the road by some passing car, and, in defiance of all speed regulations, refusing to slow up at a sharp turn in the road ahead. She took it at top speed, and as she rounded the curve the first drops of rain splashed her nose. But her flight was rewarded.

A long, low, comfortable-looking farmhouse sat back in an overgrown garden on one side of the road.

"D. Smith," read Betty on the mail box at the gate. "Well, Mrs. D. Smith, I hope you're at home, and I hope you'll ask me to come in and rest till the storm's over. Shall I knock at the back or the front door?"

A vivid flash of lightning sent her scurrying across the road and up the garden path. As she lifted the black iron knocker on the front door a peal of thunder rattled the loose casements of the windows.

Betty lifted the knocker and let it fall three times before she decided that either Mrs. D. Smith did not welcome callers at the front of her house, or else she could not hear the knocker from where she was. But a prolonged rat-a-tat-tat on the back door produced no further results.

"She may be out getting the poultry in," said Betty to herself, recalling how hard Mrs. Peabody worked every time a storm came up. "Wonder where the poultry yard is?"

The rain was driving now, and the thunder irritatingly incessant. Betty walked to the end of the back porch and stood on her tiptoes trying to see the outbuildings. Then, for the first time, she noticed what she would surely have seen in one glance at a less exciting time.

There were no outbuildings, only burned and blackened holes in the ground! A few loose bricks marked the site of masonry-work, and a charred beam or two fallen across the gaps showed only too plainly what had been the fate of barns and crib houses.

Betty ran impulsively to a window, and, holding up her hands to shut out the light, peered in. Cobwebs, dust and dirt and a few empty tins in the sink were the only furniture of the kitchen.

"It's empty!" gasped Betty. "No one lives here! Oh, gracious!"

A great fork of lightning shot across the sky, followed at once by a deafening crash of thunder. Far across the field, on the other side of the road, Betty saw a tall oak split and fall.

"I'm going in out of this," she decided, "if I have to break a window or a lock!"

She leaned her sturdy weight against the wooden door, automatically turning the knob without thought of result. The door swung easily open – there had been nothing to hinder her walking in – and she tumbled in so suddenly that she had difficulty in keeping her feet.

Betty closed the door and looked about her.

The storm shut out, she immediately felt a sense of security, though a hasty survey of the three rooms on one side of the hall failed to reveal any materials for a fire or a meal, two comforts she was beginning to crave. She took an apple from her sweater pocket, and, munching that, set out to explore the rooms on the other side of the hall.

A curious, yet familiar, noise drew her attention to the front room, probably in happier days the parlor of the farmhouse. Peering in through the partly open folding doors, Betty saw seven crates of chickens!

"Why – how funny!" She was puzzled. "Where could they have come from? And what are they doing here? Even if they saved them from the fire, they wouldn't be left after all the furniture was moved out."

She went up to the crates and examined them more closely.

"That black rooster is the living image of Mrs. Peabody's," she thought, "And the White Leghorns look like hers, too. But, then, I suppose all chickens look alike. I never could see how their hen mothers told them apart."

Still carrying her sweater with the apples, she wandered upstairs, trying to people the vacant, dusty rooms and wondering what had happened to those who had dwelt here and where they had gone.

"I wonder if the fire was at night and whether they were terribly frightened," she mused. "I should say they were mighty lucky to save the house, though perhaps the barns are the most necessary buildings on a farm. Why didn't they build them up again, instead of moving out? I would."

She was standing in one of the back rooms, and from the window she could look down and see what had once been the garden. The drenched rosebushes still showed a late blossom or two, and there was a faint outline of orderly paths and a tangle of brilliant color where flowers, self-sown, struggled to force their way through the choking weeds. The drip, drip of the rain sounded dolefully on the tin roof, and a cascade ran off at one corner of the house showing where a leader was broken. Toward the west the clouds were lifting, though the thunder still grumbled angrily.

Betty went through the rather narrow hall and entered a pleasant, prettily papered room where a low white rocking chair and a pink sock on the floor spoke mutely of the baby whose kingdom had been bounded by the wide bay window.

"They forgot the rocker," said Betty, drawing it up to the window and resting her elbows on the narrow window ledge. "I hope he was a fat, pretty baby," she went on, picking up the sock and holding it in her hand. "Is that some one coming down the road?"

It was – two people in fact; and as they drew nearer Betty's eyes almost popped out with astonishment. The pair talking together so earnestly, completely oblivious of the rain, were Lieson and Wapley, the two men who had worked for Mr Peabody! And they were turning in at the path guarded by the mail box inscribed "D. Smith."

Betty flew to the door of the room where she sat and drew the bolt.

CHAPTER XXI
THE CHICKEN THIEVES

Over in one corner of the bay-window room, as Betty had already named it, was a black register in the floor, designed to let the warm air from a stove in the parlor below heat the bedroom above. Toward this Betty crept cautiously, testing each floor board for creaks before she trusted her whole weight to it. She reached the register, which was open, and was startled at the view it opened up for her. She drew back hastily, afraid that she would be discovered.

Lieson and Wapley stood almost squarely under the register, above the crates of chickens and looking down on the fowls.

"I began to think you wasn't coming," Lieson said slowly, putting a hand on his companion's shoulder to steady himself as he lurched and swayed. "I got soaked to the skin waiting for you in those bushes."

"Well, it's some jaunt to Laurel Grove," came Wapley's response. "I got a man, though. Coming at ten to-night. There's no moon, and he says he can make the run to Petria in six or seven hours, barring tire trouble."

"Does he take us, too?" demanded Lieson. "I'm tired of hanging around here. What kind of a truck has he got?"

Wapley was so long in answering that Betty nervously wondered if he could have discovered the register. She risked a peep and found that both men were absorbed in filling their pipes. These lighted and drawing well, Wapley consented to answer his companion's question.

"Got a one-ton truck. Plenty of room under the seat for us. He's kind of leery of the constables, 'cause he's been doing a nice little night trade between Laurel Grove and Petria carrying one thing and another, but he's willing to do the job on shares."

Lieson yawned noisily.

"Wish we had some grub," he observed. "Guess the training we got at Peabody's will come in handy if we don't eat again till we sell the chickens. Wouldn't you like to have seen the old miser's face when he found his chickens were gone?"

So, thought Betty, she had not been mistaken; the black rooster was the same one who had been the pride of Mrs. Peabody's heart.

A burst of harsh laughter from Wapley startled her. Leaning forward, she could see him stretched out on the floor, his head resting on his coat, doubled up to form a pillow.

"What do you know!" he gurgled, the tears standing in his eyes. "Didn't I run into Bob Henderson, of all people!"

Lieson was incredulous.

"You're fooling," he said sullenly. "What would Bob be doing in Laurel Grove? Unless he was playing ferret! I'd wring his neck with pleasure if I thought the old man sent him over to spy."

"Don't worry," counseled Wapley, waving his pipe airily. "The lad doesn't hook us up with the missing biddies. They never knew they were stolen till ten o'clock this morning. The old man sold 'em to Ryerson, and the hen houses stayed shut up till he came to get 'em. Can you beat that for luck?"

Both men went off into roars of laughter.

"We needn't have spent the night lifting 'em," said Lieson when he could speak. "I hate to lose my night's rest. What did Bob say about it? Was the old man mad?"

"'Bout crazy," admitted Wapley gravely. "Bob wasn't home, but the old lady told him he carried on somethin' great. Wish we could 'a' heard him rave. But, Lieson, you haven't got it all. Betty Gordon's run off, and Peabody's doped it out she ran off with the hens!"

The girl in the room above clapped her hand to her mouth. She had almost cried out. So Mr. Peabody could accuse her of being a thief! But what were the men saying?

"What would the girl do with hens?" propounded Lieson. "Bob think she stole 'em?"

"Bob's so close-mouthed," growled Wapley. "But I guess he knows where she went all right. He says she had nothing to do with the hens disappearing, and I told him I thought he was right! But Peabody figures out she was mad and chased 'em into the woods to spite him. And he's hunting for her and his hens with fire in his eye."

Lieson knocked the ashes from his pipe and yawned again.

"Wonder what Peabody's got against her now?" he speculated. "For a boarder, that kid had a pretty pindling time. Well, if we're going to be bumped around in a truck all night, I'll say we ought to take a nap while we can get it."

"All right," agreed Wapley. "But I ain't aiming to go on any such trip without a bite of supper. The rain's stopped, and I'm going to snooze a bit and then go down the road to that farmhouse and see how they feel about feeding a poor unfortunate who's starving. I'll milk for 'em for a square meal."

Betty, shivering with excitement, crouched on the floor afraid to risk moving until they should be asleep. Her one thought was to get away from the house and find Bob. Bob would know what to do. Bob would get the chickens back to the Peabodys and herself over to the haven of Doctor Guerin's house, somehow. Bob would be sorry for Wapley and Lieson even if they had turned chicken thieves. If she could only get to Bob before he set out for home or if she might meet him on the road, everything would be all right, Bob must wait for her.

There were no back stairs to the house, and it required grit to go softly down the one flight of stairs and steal past the door of the parlor where the two men lay, but Betty set her teeth and did it. Once on the porch she put on her hat and sweater, for a cool wind had sprung up; and then how she ran!

The road was muddy, and her skirt was splashed before she slowed down to gain her breath. Anxiously she scanned the road ahead, wondering if there was another way Bob could take to reach Bramble Farm. As usual when one is worried, a brand-new torment assailed her. Suppose he should take the road to Glenside, that he might stop in to see her! He, of course, pictured her safe at the doctor's.

"Want a lift?" drawled a lazy, pleasant voice.

A gawky, blue-eyed boy about Bob Henderson's age beamed at her from a dilapidated old buggy. The fat, white horse also seemed to regard her benevolently.

"It's sort of muddy," said the boy diffidently. "If you don't mind the stuffing on the seat – it's worn through – I can give you a ride to Laurel Grove."

Betty accepted thankfully, but she was not very good company, it must be confessed, her thoughts being divided between schemes to hasten the desultory pace of the fat white horse and wonder as to how she was to find Bob in the town.

The fat white horse stopped of his own accord at a pleasant looking house on the outskirts of the town, and Betty, in a brown study, was suddenly conscious that the boy was waiting for her.

"Oh!" she said in some confusion. "Is this your house? Well, you were ever so kind to give me a lift, and I truly thank you!"

She smiled at him and climbed out, and the lad, who had been secretly admiring her and wondering what she could be thinking about so absorbedly, wished for the tenth time that he had a sister.

Laurel Grove was a bustling country town, a bit livelier than Glenside, and Betty, when she had traversed the main street twice, began to be aware that curious glances were being cast at her.

"I'd go shopping, I'd do anything, for an excuse to go into every store," she thought distractedly, "if only I had a dollar bill! Where can Bob be? I can't have missed him!"

There was every reason to think she had missed him, except her determined optimism, but after she had been to the drug store and the hardware store and the post-office, all more or less public meeting places, and found no sign of Bob, Betty began to feel a trifle discouraged. Then two men on the curb gave her a clue.

"I've been hanging around all day," declared one, evidently a thrifty farmer. "Came over to get some grinding done, and the blame mill machinery broke. They just started grinding an hour ago."

So there was a mill, and Bob often had to go to mills for Mr. Peabody. Betty did not know why he should have to come so far, but it was quite possible that some whim of the master of Bramble Farm had sent him to the Laurel Grove mill. Betty stepped up to the farmer and addressed him quietly.

"Please, will you tell me where the mill is?" she asked.

CHAPTER XXII
SPREADING THE NET

He was a nice, fatherly kind of person, and he insisted on walking with Betty to the corner and pointing out the low roof of the mill down a side street.

"No water power, just electricity," he explained. "Give me a water mill, every time; this current stuff is mighty unreliable."

Betty thanked him, and hurried down the street. She was sure she saw the sorrel tied outside the mill, and when she reached the hitching posts, sure enough, there was the familiar old wagon, with some filled bags in it, and the drooping, tired old sorrel horse that had come to meet her when she stepped from the train at Hagar's Corners.

"Betty! For the love of Mike!" Bob's language was expressive, if not elegant.

Betty whirled. She had not seen the boy come down the steps of the mill office, and she was totally unprepared to hear his voice.

"Why, Bob!" The unmistakable relief and gladness that shone in her tired face brought a little catch to Bob's throat.

To hide it, he spoke gruffly.

"What are you doing here? It's after four o'clock, and I'll get Hail Columbia when I get back. Mill's been out of order all day, and I had to wait. Haven't you been to Doctor Guerin's?"

"No, not yet." Betty pulled at his sleeve nervously. "Oh, Bob, there's so much I must tell you! And after ten o'clock it will be too late. To think he thought I stole his old chickens! And where is Petria?"

Bob gazed at her in amazement. This incoherent stream of words meant nothing to him.

"Petria?" he repeated, catching at a straw. "Why, Petria's a big city, sort of a center for farm products. All the commission houses have home offices there. Why?"

"That's where Mr. Peabody's chickens are going," Betty informed him, "unless you can think of a way to stop 'em."

"Mr. Peabody's chickens? Have you got 'em?" asked Bob in wonder.

Betty stamped her foot.

"Bob Henderson, how can you be so stupid!" she stormed. "What would I be doing with stolen chickens – unless you think I stole them?"

"Now don't go off into a temper," said Bob placidly. "I see where I have to drive you to Glenside, anyway. Might as well go the whole show and be half a day late while I'm about it. Hop in, Betty, and you can tell me this wonderful tale while we're traveling."

Betty was tired out from excitement, fear, insufficient food and the long distance she had walked. Her nerves protested loudly, and to Bob's astonishment and dismay she burst into violent weeping.

"Oh, I say!" he felt vainly in his pocket for a handkerchief. "Betty, don't cry like that! What did I say wrong? Don't you want to go to Glenside? What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to listen," sobbed Betty. "I'm trying to tell you as fast as I can that Wapley and Lieson stole Mr. Peabody's chickens. They've got 'em all crated, and an automobile truck is coming at ten o'clock to-night to take them to Petria. So there!"

Bob asked a few direct questions that soon put him in possession of all the facts. When he had heard the full story he took out the hitching rope he had put under the seat and tied the sorrel to the railing again.

"Come on," he said briefly.

"Where – where are we going?" quavered Betty, a little in awe of this stern new Bob with the resolute chin.

"To the police recorder's," was the uncompromising reply.

The recorder was young and possessed of plenty of what Bob termed "pep," and when he heard what Bob had to tell him, for Betty was stricken with sudden dumbness, he immediately mapped out a plan that should catch all the wrong-doers in one net.

"The fellow we want to get hold of is this truck driver," he explained. "You didn't hear his name?"

Betty shook her head.

"Well, to get him, our men will have to wait till he comes for the crates," said the recorder. "I'll send a couple of 'em out to this farm – they know the old D. Smith place well enough – and they can hang around till the truck comes and then take 'em all in. I'm sorry, but I'll have to hold the girl here as a witness. My wife will look after her, and she'll be all right."

"I'll stay, too, Betty," Bob promised her hastily, noting the plea in her eyes.

"All right, so much the better," said the recorder heartily. "We'll put you both up for the night. It won't be necessary for you to see the prisoners to-night, and to-morrow you'll both be mighty good witnesses for this Mr. Peabody. I'll send for him in the morning."

Bob's sense of humor was tickled at the thought of stabling the sorrel in a livery stable and charging the bill to his employer. A vision of what would be said to him caused his eyes to dance as he gave orders to the stableman to see that the horse had an extra good measure of oats.

But when he came back to the recorder's for supper he found Betty sitting close beside the recorder's wife, crying as though her heart would break.

"Why, Betty!" he protested. "You don't usually act like this. What does ail you – are you sick?"

"It isn't fair!" protested Betty passionately. "Wapley and Lieson worked so hard and Mr. Peabody was mean to 'em! I don't want to save his old chickens for him! I'd much rather the hired men got the money. And I won't be a witness for him and get them into prison!"

Bob looked shocked at this outburst, but Mrs. Bender only continued to soothe the girl, and presently Betty's sobs grew less violent, and by and by ceased.

After supper Mrs. Bender played for them and sang a little, and then, declaring that Betty looked tired to death, took her upstairs to the blue and white guest-room, where, after she had helped her to undress and loaned her one of her own pretty nightgowns, she turned off the lights and sat beside her till she fell asleep. For the first time in months, Betty was encouraged to talk about her mother, and she told this new friend of her great loss, her life with the Arnolds, and about her Uncle Dick. It both rested and refreshed her to give this confidence, and her sleep that night was unbroken and dreamless.

Long after Betty was asleep, Bob and the recorder played checkers, Mrs. Bender sitting near with her sewing. Bob was starved for companionship, and something about the lad, his eager eyes, perhaps, or his evident need of interested guidance, appealed to Recorder Bender.

"You say you were born in the poorhouse?" he asked, between games. "Was your mother born in this township?"

Bob explained, and the Benders were both interested in the mention of the box of papers. Encouraged by friendly auditors, Bob told his meager story, unfolding in its recital a very fair picture of conditions as they existed at Bramble Farm.

Betty lay in dreamless sleep, but Bob, in a room across the hall, tossed and turned restlessly. At half-past ten he heard the recorder go out, and knew he was going to see if the chicken thieves and motor truck driver had been brought in by his men. Bob wondered how it seemed to be arrested, and he fervently resolved never to court the experience. He was asleep before the recorder returned, but woke once during the night. A heavy truck was lumbering through the street, the driver singing in a high sweet tenor voice, probably to keep himself awake, Bob's swift thoughts flew to Wapley and Lieson, and he wondered if they were asleep. How could they sleep in jail?

Breakfast in the Bender household was just as pleasant and cheerful and unhurried as supper had been. Mrs. Bender in a white and green morning frock beamed upon Bob and Betty and urged delicious viands upon them till they begged for mercy. It was, she said, so nice to have "four at the table."

Mr. Bender pushed back his chair at last, glancing at his watch.

"The hearing is set for ten o'clock," he announced quietly. "Mr. Peabody has been notified and should be here any minute. I think we had better walk down to the office. Catherine, if you're ready – "

Mrs. Bender smiled at Betty. She had promised to see her through.