“Where were you going, miss?” asked Mr. Scruggs, after a minute’s silence.
“I was on my way to visit Mr. and Mrs. Buckham. They expect me,” said Agnes, wisely. “But I must have missed the road. I know where I am now, however, I’ll go down the railroad beyond the water-tank a little way and find the very crossing of the lane that goes into their dooryard from the west. Those trees must hide the house from here.”
Secretly Agnes wanted to get away, but not to visit Mr. and Mrs. Buckham. She felt that she ought to communicate with Neale O’Neil just as soon as possible. This old clown and his disguised daughter might have a plan to stop Neale on his way home and take the old album and its precious contents away from him.
For now Agnes, like her sister, Ruth, had begun to believe that the engraved slips of paper pasted into the book were “really truly” banknotes. How they had gotten there, and who they originally belonged to, Agnes could not guess. Nor did she believe that Neale O’Neil had carried them off with him, knowing them to be good currency.
However, everybody who got a sight of them seemed to think that the notes were legal tender. Even this strange girl, Barnabetta Scruggs, thought Neale was carrying around thousands of dollars with him. Dear me! if Neale would only know enough to go to Mr. Howbridge, there at his brother’s house at Tiverton, the lawyer would tell him just what to do with the old album.
These thoughts raced like lightning through Agnes’ mind as she turned calmly away from the campfire. “I must be going,” she said. “Good-bye.”
The man said nothing, but looked away. Barnabetta said: “How about that wolf you said was chasing you?” and she said it sneeringly, as though she doubted Agnes’ story.
“I guess he won’t follow me down upon the railroad tracks,” the Corner House girl said cheerfully.
“Huh! I guess he won’t. ’Cause why? There wasn’t any wolf,” snapped Barnabetta. “That’s a story!”
“It isn’t, either!” cried Agnes, hotly.