"You don't surprise me," remarked Bart, "but how is that?"
"Why, Martin & Company are buying green peppers at seventy cents a bushel. They heard that down at Arlington someone was offering them to the storekeepers at one dollar for two bushels, investigated, detected Dale Wacker peddling the peppers from factory bags, and found that his uncle, Lem, was mixed up in the affair. Anyway, Dale's father had to settle the bill, and they fired Lem."
"Mr. Lem Wacker is bad enough when at work," remarked Bart, "but out of work I fear he is a dangerous man. All right!" he called, hurrying to the door as there was a hail from outside.
Colonel Harrington's buckboard was backed to the platform and its driver was unloading a large trunk.
Bart helped carry it in, dumped it on the scales, went to the desk, got the receipt book, and reading the label on the trunk found that it was directed to Mrs. Harrington at Cedar Springs, the summer resort to which the colonel had already gone.
"Value?" he asked.
"Mrs. Harrington didn't say, and I don't know. If you saw all the finery in that trunk, though, you'd stare. You see, Mrs. Harrington is going to stay three weeks at the Springs, and is sending on her finest and best. I'll bet they amount to a couple of thousand dollars."
Bart filled out a blank receipt, stamping it: "Value asked, and not given."
"It can't go till morning," he said.
"That don't matter. The missus won't be going down to the Springs till Saturday."