"Is that so?" said the sheriff. "Well, this is a bit of his coat and his button; and they were found on the ledge, close to the Conscripts' Hollow where the plunder was hid; and he's a small fellow, that maybe could slip through a window-pane. That makes a pretty strong showing against him. We'll go for Barney Pratt!"
CHAPTER III
Barney Pratt expected this day to be a holiday. Very early in the morning his father and mother had jolted off in the wagon to attend the wedding of a cousin, who lived ten miles distant on a neighboring mountain, and they had left him no harder task than to keep the children far enough from the fire, and his paralytic grandmother close enough to it.
This old woman was of benevolent intentions, although she had a stick with which she usually made her wants known by pointing, and in her convulsive clutch the stick often whirled around and around like the sails of a windmill, so that if Barney chanced to come within the circle it described, he got as hard knocks from her feeble arm as he could have had in a tussle with big Nick Gregory.
He was used to dodging it, and so were the smaller children. Without any fear of it they were all sitting on the hearth at the old woman's feet,—Ben and Melissa popping corn in the ashes, and Tom and Andy watching Barney's deft fingers as he made a cornstalk fiddle for them.
Suddenly Barney glanced up and saw his grandmother's stick whirling over his head. Her eyes were fastened eagerly upon the window, and her lips trembled as she strove to speak.
"What d'ye want, granny?" he asked.
Then at last it came out, quick and sharp, and in a convulsive gasp,—"Who air all that gang o'folks a-comin' yander down the road?"
Barney jumped up, threw down the fiddle, and ran to the door with the children at his heels. There was a quiver of curiosity among them, for it was a strange thing that a "gang o'folks" should be coming down this lonely mountain road.