“And then you came after me.” I was kind of tickled to think he did that. It showed he depended on me like and thought I’d stick by him and help out. “Did you see who it was?”
“No.”
“Which way did they drive?”
He jerked his thumb down the street. “No tellin’ which way they went. Prob’ly turned the corner; I don’t know which way.”
He went around through his yard to the workshop, and, sure enough, the padlocks had been pried off and Mr. Tidd’s engine was gone. I didn’t quite realize it till then, and I tell you it struck me all in a heap. There was Mr. Tidd off in Detroit, seeing about his patent and confident of getting rich, and here we were, left to look after the engine, and we’d let it get away from us.
“Maybe he can get his patent anyhow,” I said; but there wasn’t much comfort in that, for Mark explained that it couldn’t be done. His father had to have a model that would work, or no patent would be given to him. He was sure that Henry C. Batten was at the bottom of it all, and so was I.
“What they’re goin’ to do,” he said, “is to take dad’s turbine and make drawin’s from it. They’ll git another model made and smouge the patent before we kin b-begin to put a new one together.”
“They won’t dare take it to the depot and send it on the train,” I told him.
“Not from here. Maybe they’ll drive to some town near by and p-put it in a box and send it that way.”
“Maybe,” I says; but somehow I didn’t think so. Neither did Mark, I guess.