The Girls of Hillcrest Farm Part 43

said Lyddy, and then Harris Colesworth joined them.

Now, Lyddy believed that this young man was altogether too p.r.o.ne to meddle with other people's affairs; yet ever since the Widow Harrison's vendue she had been more friendly with Harris.

And now when he began to talk about the professor and his strange actions over night, she could only thank the young chemist for his a.s.sistance.

"Of course, we have no idea that that man took anything," she concluded.

"But you know that he is after _something_. There is a mystery about his actions--both here at the house and up there in the rocks," said Harris.

"Well--ye-es."

"I have been talking to father about it. Father has seen him wandering about there so much. His anxiety not to be seen has piqued father's curiosity, too. To tell the truth, that is what has kept father so much interested in getting specimens up yonder," and the young man laughed.

"He tells me that he is sure there can be no great mineral wealth on the farm; yet Spink has found, or is trying to find, some deposit of value here----"

"Do tell him about the bottles, Lyd!" cried 'Phemie.

"Oh, well, that may be nothing----"

"What bottles?" demanded Harris, quickly. "Come on, girls, why not take me fully into your confidence? I might be of some use, you know."

"But they were nothing but bottles of water," objected Lyddy.

"Bottles of water?" repeated the young chemist, slowly. "Who had them?"

"Spink," replied 'Phemie.

"What was he doing with them?"

She told him how they had watched the professor with his inexplicable water bottles.

"Foolish; isn't it?" asked Lyddy.

"Sure--until we get the clue to it. Foolish to us, but mighty important to Professor Spink. Therefore we ought to look into it. Father doesn't know anything about this bottle business."

"Well, it's Sunday," sighed 'Phemie. "We can't do anything about the mystery to-day."

But her sister was fully roused, and when Lyddy determined on a thing, something usually came of it.

After breakfast, and after she had seen Lucas and his mother and Sairy drive past on their way to chapel, she put on her sunbonnet and started boldly for the neighboring farm, determined to have an interview with Cyrus Pritchett.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SECRET REVEALED

Lyddy did not have to go all the way to the Pritchett farm to speak with its proprietor. The farmer was wandering up Hillcrest way, looking at the growing corn, and she met him at the corner where the two farms came together.

"Mr. Pritchett," she said, abruptly, "I want to ask you a serious question."

He looked at her in his surly way--from under his heavy brows--and said nothing.

"You knew Mr. Spink when you were both boys; didn't you?"

The old man's look sharpened, but he only nodded. Cyrus was very chary of words.

"Mr. Spink left Hillcrest this morning. Last night my sister caught him in the east wing, trying to break open grandfather's desk with a burglar's jimmy. I am not at all sure that I shan't have him arrested, anyway," said Lyddy, with rising wrath, as she thought of the false professor's actions.

"Ha!" grunted Mr. Pritchett.

"Now, sir, you know _why_ Spink came to Hillcrest, _why_ he has been searching up there among the rocks, and _why_ he wanted to get at grandfather's papers."

"No, I don't," returned the farmer, flatly.

"You and Spink were up at Hillcrest the first night we girls slept there.

And you frightened my sister half to death."

The old man blinked at her, but never said a word.

"And you were there with Spink the evening Lucas took 'Phemie and me down to the Temperance Club--the first time," said Lyddy, with surety. "You slipped out of sight when we drove into the yard. But it was you."

"Oh, it was; eh?" growled Mr. Pritchett.

"Yes, sir. And I want to know what it means. What is Spink's intention?

What does he want up here?"

"I couldn't tell ye," responded Pritchett.

"You mean you won't tell me?"

"No. I say what I mean," growled Pritchett. "Jud Spink never told me what he wanted. I was up to the house with him--yep. I let him go into the cellar that night you say your sister was scart. But I didn't leave him alone there."

"But _why_?" gasped Lyddy.

"I can easy tell you my side of it," said the farmer. "Jud and me was something like chums when we was boys. When he come back here a spell ago he heard I was storing something in the cellar under the east wing of the house. He told me he wanted to get into that cellar for something.

"So I met him up there that night. I opened the cellar door and we went down. I kept a lantern there. Then I found out he wanted to go farther.

There's a hatch there in the floor of the old doctor's workshop----"

"A trap door?"

"Yes."

"And you let him up there?"

"Naw, I didn't. He wouldn't tell me what he wanted in the old doctor's offices. I stayed there a while with him--us argyfyin' all the time. Then we come away."