"Oh, _do_ come and sit down," urged Dot, eagerly, drawing an armchair to the hearth.

Barnabetta did so. Tess and Dot each brought a ha.s.sock, one on either side of the older girl. Barnabetta had a softer side to her nature than the side she had displayed to Agnes Kenway. There were little folk at the circus, who traveled with their parents with the show, who loved Barnabetta Scruggs.

A little later Agnes, pale of face and with traces of tears, came into the room. She and Ruth had hunted high and low for the lost alb.u.m Neale O'Neil had left in his satchel on the side porch.

Even Ruth admitted Neale had not halted there, when he went out so angrily, long enough to take the alb.u.m away. And both girls had seen him drop the heavy bag in that dark corner when he came in with Tess.

Somebody had removed the alb.u.m. Nor was it ridiculous to suppose that the "somebody" who had done this knew very well what the book contained.

"Oh, we've been robbed! robbed!" Ruth had cried, rocking herself back and forth in her chair in the sitting room. "What ever shall we do? What shall I say to Mr. Howbridge?"

"I don't care a thing about _him_," declared Agnes, recklessly. "But think of all that money-if it is money-"

"I tell you it is."

"But you don't know for sure," Agnes retorted. "Maybe you showed Mr.

Crouch the wrong bill."

"No. I've felt all the time," Ruth said despairingly, "that we really had a great fortune in our hands. How it came to be hidden in our garret, I don't know. Whom it really belongs to I don't know."

"Us! We found it!" sobbed Agnes.

"No. We cannot claim it. At least, not until we have searched for the rightful owners. But Mr. Howbridge will tell us."

"Oh! mercy me, Ruthie Kenway!" cried Agnes. "What's the use of talking?

It's go-o-one!"

"I don't know who-"

"You can't blame Neale now!" flared up Agnes. "You've made him mad, too.

He'll never forgive us."

"Well! What business had he to carry off that book?" demanded Ruth. "He can be mad if he wants to be. If he hadn't carried it away there would have been no trouble at all."

"Oh, Ruthie! It isn't his fault that somebody has stolen it now,"

repeated Agnes.

"Why isn't it?"

"How could it be?"

"Like enough the foolish boy showed all that money to somebody, and he has been followed right here to the house by the robber."

Agnes gasped. Then she sat back in her chair and stared at her sister.

Suddenly, with an inarticulate cry, she arose and dashed upstairs.

Although she had not asked, Agnes supposed the circus girl had retired immediately after dinner. It was still early in the evening, and Agnes and Ruth had had no private conversation regarding Barnabetta and her father. Neale's arrival had driven that out of both their minds.

But into Agnes' brain now came the thought that Barnabetta had seen the old alb.u.m full of money and bonds while Neale was at the winter quarters of the circus.

"Oh, dear me! Can she be so very, very wicked?" thought Agnes. "They are so desperately in need. And such an amount of money is an awful temptation-that is, it would be a temptation if it _were_ money!"

For despite all that Ruth said, Agnes could not believe that the wonderful contents of the old alb.u.m was bona fide money and bonds.

The thought, however, that Barnabetta might be tempted to steal from those who had been kind to her, troubled Agnes exceedingly. She did not want to say anything to Ruth about her suspicions of the circus girl yet. Why make her sister suspicious, too, unless she was sure of her evidence?

Agnes listened at the door of Barnabetta's room. There was no sound in there and she finally turned the k.n.o.b softly and pushed open the door a crack. The lighted room was revealed; but there was no sign of occupancy save the shabby boy's clothing folded on a chair. The bed had not been touched.

Was the circus girl with her father? Or had she left the house on some errand?

Agnes crept to the other door and put her ear to the panel. At first she heard nothing. Then came a murmur, as of voices in low conversation.

Were the circus people talking? Had Barnabetta really gained possession of the book, and were she and her father examining it?

Then Agnes suddenly fell to giggling; for what she actually heard was Mr. Asa Scruggs' rhythmic snoring.

"She surely isn't there," decided Agnes, creeping away down the hall again. "He's sound asleep. If Barnabetta's up to any mischief-if she's taken that alb.u.m-she can't be in there with it."

It was immediately following this decision that Agnes, returning downstairs by the front way, heard voices in the dining room. She looked in to see Barnabetta sitting with Tess and Dot before the fire, telling the little girls stories of circus life.

Agnes dodged out of there. She had seen enough, she thought, to convince any one that the circus girl was not guilty.

"Where'd you go to?" demanded Ruth, when her sister returned to the sitting room.

"I went to see where that Barnabetta Scruggs was," confessed Agnes.

"Oh, my! I did not think of _them_." Ruth said.

"Well, she's all right. She's in the dining room telling Tess and Dot stories. It certainly could not be Barnabetta. Why! we'd have heard her go through the hall and out upon the porch."

"Why! She doesn't know anything about the alb.u.m," retorted Ruth. "I tell you it's been stolen by somebody who followed Neale here to the house."

"Well, surely that couldn't be Barnabetta," admitted Agnes; "for _she_ got here first."

"That is true," Ruth agreed. "No. Somebody followed that foolish boy-perhaps away from Tiverton. And to think of his throwing down a satchel of money on the porch in that careless way!"

"Oh, but Ruthie! that proves Neale doesn't believe it is good money,"

Agnes said eagerly. "Else he wouldn't have left it out there. Of course he has found out that it is all counterfeit."

"You never can tell what a foolish boy will do," retorted Ruth, tossing her head.

"Shall-shall we tell the police we've been robbed?" hesitated Agnes.

"Why should we tell them, I'd like to know?" demanded Ruth, shortly.

"What should we tell them? That we've lost a hundred thousand dollars that doesn't belong to us?"

"Oh, mercy!"

"I'd be afraid to," confessed the troubled Ruth. "You don't know what they might do to us for losing it."