The Corner House Girls Growing Up Part 23

"I should hope not. I ain't got no use for him."

"Then he is a pretty poor citizen, I take it?"

"I cal'late he's the poorest kind we got. He ain't even wuth sendin' to jail. He'd gone long ago if he was. No. I've no use for Cap'n Bill."

"But you saw there was n.o.body with him on the boat--no children?"

"Only that gal of his."

"No others?"

"Wal, I dunno. I tell you I didn't stop none to have any doin's with _them_. I done my duty and that's all. I ain't required by law to gas with all the riffraff that sails this here ca.n.a.l."

"I believe you," agreed Luke mildly. He looked at Neale and grinned.

"Not very conclusive, is it?" he asked.

"Not to my mind. Bet the kids were on there with this little girl he speaks of," muttered Neale.

"Oh, do you believe it, Neale?" gasped Agnes, leaning over the back of the seat.

"I am sure we are much obliged to you, sir," Ruth said, sweetly, as the engine began to roar again.

"What's up, anyway?" asked the crabbed lock-keeper. "You got something on that Bill Quigg?"

"Can't tell, Mister," Neale said seriously. "You ask him about it when he comes back."

"Now, Neale, you've started something," declared Ruth, as the automobile sped away. "You just see if you haven't."

CHAPTER XVI

THE RINGMASTER

"Just the same, that old fellow didn't even know whether there was somebody aboard the ca.n.a.lboat with Quigg and his daughter or not," Neale O'Neil said, as they turned back into the Durginville road.

"Oh!" cried Cecile. "Are you going on?"

"We are--just," said her brother. "Until we solve the mystery of the _Nancy Hanks_."

"Do you suppose that ca.n.a.l boatman is bad enough to have shut the children up on his boat and will keep them for ransom?" demanded Agnes, filled with a new fear.

"He's not a brigand I should hope," Cecile Shepard cried.

"Can't tell what he is till we see him," Neale grumbled. "If this old ca.n.a.lboat hasn't been wrecked or sunk, we'll find it and interview Cap'n Quigg before we go back."

"Meanwhile," Ruth said, with more than a little doubt, "the children may be wandering in quite an opposite direction."

"Why, of course, our guess may be wrong, Ruth," Luke said thoughtfully, turning around the better to speak with the oldest Corner House girl.

"However, we are traveling so fast that it will not delay us much."

"Pshaw, no!" exclaimed Neale. "We'll be in Durginville in a few minutes."

But they did not get that far. Crossing the ca.n.a.l by a liftbridge they swept along the other side and suddenly coming out of the woods saw before them a tented city.

"Why!" cried Cecile, "it's a circus!"

"I saw the pictures on the billboards," her brother admitted. "If we only had the children with us, and everything was all right, we might go."

"Sure we would," responded Neale, smiling.

"Oh, Neale!" cried Agnes, "is it Uncle Bill's?"

"Yes. I have a letter in my pocket now from him that I've had no chance to read."

"You don't suppose Mr. Sorber knows anything about the children?" said Ruth, a little weakly for her.

"How could he?" gasped Agnes. "But we ought to stop and ask."

"And see about the calico pony," chuckled Neale. "Tess and Dot have been hounding me to death about that."

"You don't suppose Dot could have started out to hunt for the circus to get that pony, do you?" suggested Ruth, almost at her wits' end to imagine what had happened to her little sister and her friend.

"We'll know about that shortly," Neale declared.

Suddenly Luke Shepard exclaimed:

"Hullo, what's afire, Neale? See yonder?"

"At the ca.n.a.l," cried his sister, seeing the smoke too.

"Is it a house?" asked Agnes.

"A straw stack!" cried Neale. "Must be. Some farmer is losing the winter's bedding for his cattle."

"It is on the ca.n.a.l," Luke put in. "Don't you see? There's one of those old barges there--and the smoke is coming from it."

"There are the flames. The fire's burst out," Agnes cried.

Suddenly Ruth startled them all by demanding:

"How do we know it isn't the _Nancy Hanks_?"

"Crickey! We don't," acknowledged Neale, and immediately touched the accelerator. The car leaped ahead. They went roaring on toward the circus grounds and the ca.n.a.l, and people on the road stepped hastily aside at the "Honk! Honk!" of the automobile horn.

Fortunately there were not many vehicles in the road, for most of the farmers' wagons had already reached the grounds, and their mules and horses were hitched beside the right of way. But there was quite a crowd upon the tented field. This crowd had not, however, as Louise Quigg feared "seen everything all up" before the ca.n.a.lboat girl and her father reached the tents.