The Corner House Girls' Odd Find Part 21

After a minute or two the Corner House girl crept forward. Some of her usual courage returned to her. Her heart beat high and her color rose.

She bit her lower lip with her pretty, even teeth, as she always did when she labored under suppressed excitement, and tiptoed to the end of the piled up ties.

The voices were louder here-more easily distinguished. There were two of them-a young voice and an old voice. And in a moment she discovered something that pleased and relieved her. The young voice was a girl's voice-Agnes was quite positive of that.

She thought at once: "No harm can come to me if there is a girl here.

But who can she be, camping out in the snowy woods?"

In another moment she would have stepped around the corner of the pile of ties and revealed herself to the strangers had not something that was said reached her ears-and that something was bound to arrest Agnes Kenway's attention.

"A book full of money."

The young voice said this, and then the other spoke, it seemed, doubtingly.

Again came the girl's voice with pa.s.sionate earnestness:

"I tell you I saw it! I know 'twas money."

"It don't sound reasonable," and the man's husky voice was plainer now.

"I tell you I saw it. I had the book in my hand."

"Why didn't you bring it away and let me see it?" demanded the other.

"I'd ha' done it, Pop, if I'd been let. He had it in his bag in his room. I got in and had the book in my hand. It's heavy and big, I tell you! He came in and caught me messin' with his things, and I thought he'd lam me! You know, Neale always was high tempered," added the strange young voice.

Agnes was powerless to move. Mention of money in a book was sufficient to hold her in her tracks. But now they were speaking of Neale O'Neil!

"Where'd he ever get so much money?" demanded the husky voice.

"Stole it, mebbe."

"None of the Sorbers was ever light-fingered-you've got to say that much for them."

"What's that boy doing with all that money, and we so poor?" snarled the young voice, "Wasn't you hurt when that gasoline tank exploded in the big top, just the same as Bill Sorber? And n.o.body made any fuss over you."

"Well, well, well," muttered the man.

"They're not carin' what becomes of us-neither Twomley nor Sorber. Here you've been laid up, and it's mid-winter and too late for us to get any job till the tent shows open in the spring. An' we must beat it South like hoboes. I say 'tisn't fair!" and the young voice was desperate.

"There ain't many things fair in this world, Barnabetta," said the husky voice, despondently.

"I-I'd steal that money from Neale Sorber if I got the chance. And he'll be coming back to this very next town with it. That's where he's living now-at Milton. I hate all the Sorbers." "There, there, Barnabetta! Don't take on so. We'd have got into some good act in vaudeville 'fore now if I hadn't had to favor my ankle."

"You'd better've let me go into that show alone, Pop."

"No, no, my girl. You're too young for that. No, that warn't the right kind of a show."

The girl's voice sounded wistful now: "Wish we could get an act like that we had in the tent show when Neale was with us. He was a good kid then."

"Yes; but there ain't many like Neale Sorber was. And like enough he's gone stale 'fore now."

"I'd just like to know where he got all that money," said the girl-voice. "And in a book, too. I thought 'twas a photograph alb.u.m."

"Hist!" said the man-voice, "'Tisn't so much where he got it as it is, is he comin' back here with it."

"He'll come back to Milton, sure. Bill Sorber isn't so sick now."

The voices died to a whisper. Agnes, both troubled and frightened, tried to steal away. But she had been resting her weight upon the corner of the heap of ties. As she moved, the icy timbers shook, slid, and suddenly overturned.

Agnes, her face white, and with a terrified air, found herself facing a man and, not a girl but, a boy, who had sprung up from a log by the fire. And they knew she had overheard their conversation.

CHAPTER XIV

BARNABETTA

"Why, there isn't any girl here at all!" Agnes Kenway exclaimed, as she faced the two people who had been sitting by the bonfire.

They were shabby people and both had bundles tied to the end of stout staves. Evidently they had either walked far, or had stolen a ride upon a freight train to this spot. There was a water-tank in sight.

The boy, who was thin, and tall, and wiry looking, slipped the bundle off his stick, and seizing the stick itself as a club, advanced stealthily around one side of the fire. The man seemed to be a much more indecisive sort of creature. His smooth face was like parchment; his ears stood out like bats' wings. No one could honestly call him good looking. Rather was he weak looking; and his expression was one of melancholy.

Somehow, Agnes was not much afraid of the man. It was the boy who made her tremble. He looked so wild, and his eyes blazed so as he clutched the stick, creeping nearer to Agnes all the time.

As he advanced, Agnes began to retreat, stepping slowly backward. She would have run at once, trusting to her lightness of foot to relieve her of the boy's company in a few rods, had it not been that she remembered the unknown and savage beast that had followed her to this spot.

It must have been this boy's voice she had heard; yet it sounded just like a girl's. Agnes was greatly puzzled by the youth's appearance. She looked again over his supple, crouching body as he advanced. It was wide-hipped, narrow-waisted, and not at all boyish looking. Despite the thinness of this young stroller, his figure did not at all suggest the angles of a boy's frame.

Aside from being puzzled, Agnes Kenway was much afraid of him. His face was so keenly threatening in expression, and his stealthy actions so antagonistic, that the Corner House girl almost screamed aloud. Finally, she found relief in speech.

"What are you going to do with that stick? Put it down!" she cried.

"I-I--You've been listening to us talking," said the boy. But it was the girl's voice that spoke.

It did not sound like a boy's voice at all. It was too high, and there was a certain sweetness to it despite the tremor of the notes. Agnes began to recover her self-possession. She might have been afraid of a reckless boy. But she was strong herself, and agile. Even if the other did have a stick-

"You were listening," cried the other accusingly, again. "Yes, I was listening-a little," confessed the Corner House girl. "But so would you-"

"No, I wouldn't. That's sneaky," snapped the other.

"How about your finding out about the book of money you spoke of?" asked Agnes, boldly. "Didn't you do anything 'sneaky' to find out about _that_?"

The other started and dropped the stick. The man sat down suddenly. It was plain, even to usually un.o.bservant Agnes Kenway, that her remark had startled both of them.

"I was alone-and lost," Agnes went on to explain. "I was trying to reach Mr. Bob Buckham's farm, and a wolf chased me-"