“Hurrah!” shouted Agnes. “Oh, dear! I’m so glad—”
But Ruth uttered a cry of despair. She had brought the old volume to the table and opened it. The yellowed and paste-stained pages were bare!
Swiftly she fluttered the leaves from the front to the back cover. Not a bond, not a banknote, was left in the book. Everything of value had been removed, and the girls, horror-stricken, realized that the treasure was as far from their custody as ever.
CHAPTER XXIII—WHO WAS THE ROBBER?
That was a terrible moment in the lives of the two older Corner House girls.
Terrible for Ruth, because she saw crushed thus unexpectedly her desire to make Mrs. Eland and her sister happy and comfortable for life. Terrible for Agnes, because she could think of nobody but Neale O’Neil who could have got at the album and abstracted the money and bonds.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!” wailed Agnes, and threw herself into a chair, despairingly.
Ruth was pallid. Barnabetta Scruggs stared at the two Corner House girls with horrified, wide-open eyes.
“Now—now,” the circus girl muttered, “you girls won’t ever believe a word I say!”
“Why not, Barnabetta?” asked Agnes.