The Curlytops and Their Playmates Part 30

"What?" he asked.

"The plum pudding! Some one has taken it!"

CHAPTER XIX

SKYROCKET IS GONE

Uncle Toby first looked around the table at the double row of faces of the children. All showed as much surprise as had Aunt Sallie when she had come in with the news about the pudding being gone. At first Uncle Toby had an idea that one of the boys had taken the dessert for a joke, hiding it away in some nook. But one look at the faces of Tom, Ted, and Harry showed Uncle Toby that this had not happened.

"Where did you put the pudding, Aunt Sallie?" Uncle Toby wanted to know.

"Right inside the kitchen pantry, on the back shelf near the window."

"Was the window open, Aunt Sallie?"

"Just a little crack, yes, Uncle Toby. I opened it when I set the pudding near it so it would cool a little before the children ate it."

"That accounts for it then!" exclaimed Mr. Bardeen. "Skyrocket reached in through the open window and took the pudding!"

There was a gasp of surprise from the children at this, and Ted exclaimed:

"Oh, it couldn't have been our dog, Uncle Toby! He's been right here in the room all the while."

"Yes, that's so," added Aunt Sallie. "And, anyhow, the window wasn't open wide enough for Skyrocket to get his head in. He couldn't take the pudding out in his paw as your monkey could do."

"Maybe not," agreed Uncle Toby. "Anyhow, I'm glad to know it wasn't Skyrocket, for I like that dog. But some one must have taken the pudding, Aunt Sallie. Unless it slipped out of the window itself, and went off on the toboggan!"

The children laughed at this idea, but Aunt Sallie took it seriously, for she said:

"Oh, it couldn't do that, Uncle Toby. I mean it couldn't slip out of the window," she added, as the Curlytops laughed again. "I had it covered with a tin pan, and that's on the shelf, but the pudding is gone from under it."

"This is getting mysterious," said Uncle Toby. "We must take a look and see about it."

"I'm so sorry, for I wanted the children to have some of my plum pudding," went on Aunt Sallie.

"Oh, don't worry about it," said Lola. "We had plenty to eat."

"Too much, I'm afraid," chuckled Uncle Toby. "Maybe it's just as well the pudding is missing. The children will sleep better without it, Aunt Sallie."

"Oh, 'tisn't so much the _pudding_ that I am worried about," went on the kindly housekeeper, in a whisper. "It is that some one may be sneaking around here taking things."

"Do you think that happened?" asked Uncle Toby. The children had run into the kitchen to look at the window through which the pudding had so mysteriously disappeared, and Uncle Toby and Aunt Sallie could speak freely.

"Yes, Uncle Toby, I think that is what happened," said the old lady.

"Some tramp, or somebody, must have been sneaking around your cabin.

They looked in the window, saw my pudding, and took it while we were all in the dining room. 'Tisn't so much that I mind the pudding; that is, if it was taken by some one really hungry. For this is Thanksgiving, and I wouldn't want any one to go hungry. But if they had knocked at the door and asked for something to eat I'd have given it to them, and then the pudding would be safe. What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," answered Uncle Toby, as he and Aunt Sallie followed the children. "We never had any tramps in these woods. Maybe it's that queer man we saw over in Newt Baker's old shack. He may be a hungry tramp."

"Well, something ought to be done about it," declared Aunt Sallie. "I won't feel safe with such people roaming the woods."

"Maybe when I look in the snow under the window I'll see the paw marks of a bear," suggested Uncle Toby.

"What would that mean?" asked Aunt Sallie, rather startled.

"It would mean that a bear came up, put his paws in through the window, knocked the pan cover off and took the pudding," was the answer.

"Well, I'm not so much afraid of bears as I am of tramps," said Aunt Sallie, with a smile. "I almost wish it was a bear!"

But it was not. In the light covering of newly fallen snow under the pantry window, through which the pudding had been taken, were the marks of a man's feet. Big feet they were, with heavy shoes, for the prints of the hob nails could be seen in the snow.

Uncle Toby looked at the marks for several minutes. He and Aunt Sallie and the children could see where the man, whoever he was, had come out of the woods, walked up to the open window, and, after standing about and tramping to and fro, had marched back to the woods again.

"It looks as if he came here, looked in, saw the pudding, and started away without taking it," said Uncle Toby, as he looked closely at the big footprints in the snow. "Then he turned back, because he was so hungry he just couldn't leave that pudding there in plain sight, I suppose. He took it and went back to the woods with it to eat it."

"Who was he?" asked Tom.

"That I don't know," Uncle Toby replied. "He must be a stranger around here, for anybody else would ask for something to eat if he were hungry. And most of the folks around here are well enough off to get their own Thanksgiving dinner. They don't have to take other folks'

pudding."

"That's so," said Aunt Sallie. "I wish it hadn't happened, even though I don't mind a poor hungry man having my nice pudding."

"Is your dog a bloodhound?" asked Harry of Ted, as the boys remained looking at the footprints in the snow, after the girls had gone back into the house with Aunt Sallie.

"Oh, no, Skyrocket isn't a bloodhound," answered Ted. "Why?"

"Well, I thought maybe if he was he could smell at these marks in the snow and then track the man to where he was and we could get back the pudding," Harry went on.

"Guess there wouldn't be much of the pudding left," said Tom, with a laugh.

"No," agreed Ted. "Anyhow, Skyrocket isn't a bloodhound, and I don't believe he'd know how to track a man down."

And evidently Skyrocket didn't take much interest in the strange footprints in the snow, for, after sniffing them once or twice, he raced away to chase a s...o...b..rd which flew down to get the crumbs Aunt Sallie scattered from the dinner table. Of course Skyrocket couldn't catch or harm the s...o...b..rd, and he knew it, but he loved to race about and bark.

"No use trying to get him to follow a trail," said Tom. "He's too crazy!

A good dog, but too crazy!"

"That's right!" a.s.sented Ted.

Uncle Toby, having listened to the talk of the boys, went back into the cabin, and soon came out with his heavy overcoat and cap on.

"Where are you going?" asked Ted.

"Oh, just down to the village. You boys stay here and look after things until I get back," was the answer.