Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill Part 24

"Look here," continued the boy, and drew forth the j.a.panned box.

"Well! Well!" and Jasper's mean little eyes twinkled more than ever.

"You don't mean to say you found that down yonder?"

"We did," said Tom, tartly.

"Now, where was it?"

"Where it had been hidden," snapped Tom, quite disgusted with the old man. "Where it was supposed to be very safe, I reckon."

"Like enough, Tom," said Jasper, mildly. "What do you reckon on doing with it?"

"You don't claim it to be yours, then?" demanded Tom, in some surprise.

"No-o," said Parloe, slowly.

"It has your initials on it," said Helen, quickly.

"That's odd, ain't it?" returned Parloe, standing where he was and not offering to touch the box. "But other people have the same initials that I have." His grin grew to huge proportions, and he looked so sly that nothing but his high, bony nose kept his two little eyes from running together and making one eye of it. "Jabe Potter, for instance."

"Then you think this is likely to be Mr. Potter's?" queried Tom.

"Couldn't say. Jabe will probably claim it. He would take advantage of the initials, sure enough."

"And why don't you?" asked Helen.

"'Cause me and Jabe are two different men," declared Parloe, righteously. "n.o.body ever could say, with proof, that Jasper Parloe took what warn't his own."

"This is my uncle's cash-box, I am very sure," interposed Ruth, with some anger. "It was not swept away the day of the flood. You were there in his little office at the very moment the waters struck the mill, and we saw you running from the place as though you were scared."

"Jefers-pelters!" croaked Jasper. "It was enough to scare anybody!"

"That may be. But you weren't too scared to grab this box when you ran. And you must have hidden it under your coat as you left the mill.

I am going to tell my uncle all about it--and how we saw you down the hill yonder, looking at this very box before you thrust it back in its hiding place."

Jasper Parloe grew enraged rather than frightened by this threat.

"Tell!" he barked. "You tell what ye please. Provin's another thing. I don't know nothin' about the box. I never opened it. I don't know what's in it. And you kin tell Jabe that if he tries to make me trouble over it I'll make him trouble in a certain locality--he knows where and what about."

"I shall give him the box and tell him how it came into my possession," repeated Ruth, firmly, and then she and her friends drove away.

They hurried Tubby back to the Red Mill and Ruth ran in ahead of her friends with the cash-box in her hands. The moment Uncle Jabez saw it he started forward with a loud cry. He almost tore the box from her grasp; but then became gentle again in a moment.

"Gal!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, softly, "how'd ye git this away from Parloe?"

"Oh, Uncle! how did you know he had it?"

"I've been suspicious. He couldn't scarce keep it to hisself. He ain't opened it, I see."

"I don't think he has."

"We'll see. Tell me about it," urged the miller, staring at Helen and Tom as they approached.

Ruth told him all about it. She pointed, too, to the fact that Helen and Tom--and especially Tom's dog--had had more to do with the recovery of the cash-box than she had. Uncle Jabez listened and nodded as though he appreciated that fact. Meanwhile, however, he hunted up the key to the j.a.panned box and unlocked it.

It was plain that the contents of the box were for the most part securities in the shape of stocks and bonds, with a good deal of currency in small notes. There was a little coin--gold and silver-- packed into one compartment. Uncle Jabez counted it all with feverish anxiety.

"Right to a penny!" he gasped, when he had finished, and mopped the perspiration from his brow. "The rascal didn't touch it. He didn't dare!"

"But he'll dare something else, Uncle," said Ruth, hastily. "I believe he's going right to Mr. Cameron to make you trouble."

"Ah-ha!" exclaimed Uncle Jabez, and looked hard at Tom.

"I'm sorry if he makes trouble about that old thing, Mr. Potter," said Tom, stumblingly. "I've tried to keep his mouth shut--"

"Ah-ha!" said Uncle Jabez, again. Then he added: "And I shouldn't be at all surprised, young man, if you'd given Jasper money to keep his mouth shut--eh?"

Tom flushed and nodded "I didn't want any row--especially when Helen and I think so much of Ruth."

"You wouldn't have bought Jasper off for my sake, I reckon," said Jabez, sharply. "You wouldn't have done it for my sake?"

"Why should I?" returned Tom, coolly. "You never have been any too friendly towards me."

"Hah!" said the miller, nodding. "That's true. But let me tell you, young man, that I saw your father about the time I ran you down. We don't get along very well, I admit. I ain't got much use for you Camerons. But I had no intention of doing you harm. You can believe that, or not. If you will remember, the evening you went over that embankment on the Wilkins Corners road, I came up behind you. My mules were young, and your dog jumped out at them and scared them. They bolted, and I never knew till next day that you had been knocked over the embankment."

"We'll let bygones be bygones, Mr. Potter," said Tom, good-humoredly.

"I came out of it all right."

"But you had no business to pay Jasper Parloe money for keeping still about it," said the miller, sourly. "Being bled by a blackmailer is never the action of a wise man. When he threatened me I went to your father at once and got ahead of Parloe. We agreed to say nothing about it--that's about all we did agree on, however," added Mr. Potter, grimly. "Now you children run along. Ruth, come here. I figger I owe you something because of the finding of this box. Yes! I know how much the others had to do with it, too. But they'd never been over there in Olakah Glen if it hadn't been for you. I'll make this up to you. I never yet owed a debt that I didn't repay in full. I'll remember this one, gal."

But so much happened in those next two weeks, following the finding of the cash-box, that Ruth quite forgot this promise on her uncle's part.

She realized, however, that he seemed really desirous of being kind to her, and that much of his grimness had disappeared.

Everybody at the Red Mill--and many other people, too--had their thoughts fixed upon Mercy Curtis at this time. She had been getting stronger all the while. She had been able to hobble on her two sticks from her bedroom to the porch. She had been to ride half a dozen times in the Camerons' automobile. And then, suddenly, without other warning, Doctor Davison and the strange surgeon who had once examined Mercy, appeared in a big limousine car, with a couch arranged inside, and they whisked Mercy off to a sanitarium some miles away, where she was operated on by the famous surgeon, with Doctor Davison's help, and from which place the report came back in a few days that the operation had been successful and that Mercy Curtis would--in time--walk again!

Meanwhile, Ruth had kept up her recitations to Miss Cramp, often walking back and forth to town, but sometimes getting "a lift," and the teacher p.r.o.nounced her prepared to enter the Cheslow High School.

She had taken the studies that Helen Cameron had taken, and, on comparing notes, the chums found that they were in much the same condition of advancement.

"Oh, if you were only going to Briarwood with me, instead of to Cheslow High!" wailed Helen, one day, as they sat on the porch of the Red Mill house.

"Ah, dear!" said Ruth, quietly, "don't talk about it. I want to go with you more than I ever wanted to do anything in my whole life--"

"What's that?" exclaimed Uncle Jabez's gruff voice behind them.

"What's that you want to do, Ruth?"

"To--to go to boarding school, Uncle," stammered his niece.

"Hah!" grunted the miller. "Ain't you calculatin' on going to high school?"