“You’re a fine, brave girl, Sally,” Billy said, as they came up the path. But she would have none of his praise.
“I was just so curious to see what was up there,” she said, “that I could not possibly help going to find out. I—I wish I hadn’t screamed so when the rifle went off.”
Early as it was, there proved to be a visitor there before them. Some one was sitting on the doorstone with his face buried in his hands, some one whose shock of rumpled yellow hair told plainly that it could be no other than Johann Happs.
“I—I came to see about the clocks, if they were running—” he began to explain lamely.
“It is rather a queer time to come,” Sally commented severely, regarding him with some suspicion. The look of utter misery that he gave her, however, melted her warm little heart and she sat down impulsively upon the step beside him.
“What is the matter, Joe, tell me,” she urged.
Johann shook his head in mute anguish, and said nothing.
“It is not anything,” he finally managed to get out; “not anything at all.”
Billy’s mind had been rapidly putting two and two together so that he broke forth now with the question:
“Johann, did you see that German go by here and take the catboat?”