“Suppose,” demanded Ruth quickly, “this thief that has got my manuscript should offer it to some producer? Why! if I tried to rewrite it and bring it out, I might be accused of plagiarizing my own work.”
“Jimminy!”
“I wouldn’t dare,” said Ruth, shaking her head. “As long as I do not know what has become of the scenario and my notes, I will not dare use the idea at all. It is dreadful!”
The rain was now falling less torrentially. The tempest was passing. Soon there was even a rift in the clouds in the northwest where a patch of blue sky shone through “big enough to make a Scotchman a pair of breeches,” as Aunt Alvirah would say.
“We’d better go up to the house,” sighed Ruth.
“I’ll go right around to the neighbors and see if anybody has noticed a stranger in the vicinity,” Tom suggested.
“There’s Ben! Do you suppose he has seen anybody?”
A lanky young man, his clothing gray with flour dust, came from the back door of the mill and hastened under the dripping trees to reach the porch of the farmhouse. He stood there, smiling broadly at them, as Ruth and Tom hurriedly crossed the yard.
“Good day, Mr. Tom,” said Ben, the miller’s helper. Then he saw Ruth’s troubled countenance. “Wha—what’s the matter, Ruthie?”
“Ben, I’ve lost something.”