this knight-errant—Happens to be traveling across wild country in this casual manner?”
They all looked at each other. None of them had yet thought of this. Bob took up his paper again. “Listen,” he said. “This is to-day’s paper, and I find an account of what happened yesterday on the railroad about ten miles north of us, on the stretch between Winton and Farnham.” He began to read from the newspaper.
“Boy disappears from train, and is not recovered.—Yesterday afternoon disappeared from train number 12, on the Worcester and North Adams branch of the B. & M. R. R., between Winton and Farnham, a boy of fifteen years. He was traveling with an older brother, W. L. Wilson, a New York business man, who was greatly agitated at the disappearance. It seems that on the long stretch between these towns, the older brother was playing whist in the smoking-car, when the boy, complaining of the air, got permission to go to the next car. Since then he has not been seen. It was at first supposed that, being dizzy from the close atmosphere of the smoking-car, he had fallen from the platform of the train. Wilson, together with a foreman and three men of a section gang, traveled the whole distance back to Winton on a hand-car, keeping a most careful watch for the boy; but no trace of him was found. No other train had passed over the road, a single-track division, in the interval, and at first it seemed impossible to account for his disappearance. Wilson then acknowledged that he and his brother had recently quarreled, and that the lad might have run away in a fit of temper. The conductor states that about seven miles out of Winton the train slowed up sufficiently for an active boy to jump from the step without danger. Had he walked back to Winton, a junction, he might have taken the train for New York, which left shortly before the older brother’s return. No one recollected seeing a boy of the description, but Wilson, acting upon the theory, and declaring that he knew where his brother would naturally go, took the first train to New York. There is another theory: that the boy fell into one of the three ponds over which the railroad passes.”
Bob looked up. ‘“Perhaps,” he said, “we can now form a third theory of our own. There is a spiteful young brother for you, to do so much to make trouble for an honest and well-meaning, though perhaps unduly strict, older brother.”
“How do you know so much about him?” demanded Harriet.
“Because,” answered Bob, “though you yourself have not yet discovered it, all older brothers are honest and well-meaning. Even their strictness arises from the kindly desire to save unfortunate youngsters from mistakes which the elder has already committed and repented of. Now, shall we wire to this Mr. Wilson of New York?”
“But,” cried Harriet, “we can’t be sure that this is the same boy?”
Mr. Dodd rose. “The boy himself shall decide that. My dear,” he said to his wife, “we ’d better drive to Nate’s after dinner and see the lad. Meanwhile, dinner is waiting.”
Through the meal, the wallet weighed like lead in Harriet's pocket. It seemed to her as if every one must know that she had it. Her mother remarked on her lack of appetite, and noticed, without speaking of it, her absent-mindedness. But both of these characteristics were natural after such an experience as Harriet’s, and Mrs. Dodd, careful mother though she was, did not suspect that there was anything more on the girl’s mind.
Harriet was trying to decide what she ought to do. On the one hand, she had promised to tell no one of the wallet; but on the other, there was the fact, which she could not deny, that the wallet had been—no, not stolen from Brian, but found and kept. While her father had been giving Brian the money, Harriet had been obstinately silent, trying to find some way in which to keep her promise; but the longer she thought of the matter the more firmly she became convinced that she must tell.
“I will tell Mother about it immediately after dinner,” she decided.
But the meal was no sooner finished, with Harriet watching for a chance of a talk with her mother, than Mr. Dodd said to his wife, “Come, dear. The horse is waiting.”
“Where are you going?” cried Harriet.
“To Nate's,”” answered her mother. “We want to see how the boy is.”
In spite of her disappointment, Harriet looked at her mother gratefully. Mrs. Dodd, a very handsome woman for all her forty-five years, had more than her good looks wherewith to claim her daughter’s admiration. She was quick to do good; Nate had judged her well when he foresaw this visit. Harriet gave her Nate’s message: she might see the boy, but was not to expect to take him away.
“Very well,” laughed Mrs. Dodd. With her husband she departed.
Bob had gone to the mill. Harriet, left alone with Brian and Pelham, thanked her cousin for giving up his claim to the money. “It was very good of you,” she said.
“Good of him,” echoed Pelham. Harriet, “I tell you, that 's what I call ‘going some.'”
Brian sprang to his feet. “Confound you, Pelham,” he cried. “Cut that out!” He went quickly out of the room.
“Snappy, is n't he?” asked Pelham.
But with her mind still full of Brian’s generosity, Harriet saw nothing unnatural in his temper. “He does n't like to be praised,” she said. And Pelham returning no answer, she sat thinking.
It seemed to her that her course was clear.
