“You are the boss, here, Neale,” said the older man, immediately entering the wood on the right side of the road. “I see a stick here that looks promising.”
He passed under the broadly spreading branches of a huge chestnut tree. There were several of these monsters along the edge of the wood. Mr. Pinkney suddenly shouted something, and dropped upon his knees between two outcropping roots of the tree.
“What is it, Mr. Pinkney?” cried Agnes, running across the road.
Their neighbor appeared, erect again. In his hand he bore the well-remembered extension-bag which Sammy Pinkney had so often borne away from home upon his truant escapades.
“What do you know about this?” demanded Sammy’s father. “Here’s his bag—filled with his possessions, by the feel of it. But where is the boy?”
“He—he’s got away!” gasped Agnes.
“And we almost had him,” was Neale’s addition to the amazed remarks of the trio of searchers.
CHAPTER XV—UNCERTAINTIES
The secret had now been revealed! But of course it did not do Sammy Pinkney the least bit of good. His extension-bag had not been stolen at all.
Merely, when that sleepy boy had stumbled away the night before to the spring for a drink of water, he had not returned to the right tree for the remainder of the night. In his excitement in the morning, after discovering his loss, Sammy ran about a good deal (as Uncle Rufus would have said) “like a chicken wid de haid cut off.” He did not manage to find the right tree at all.