Allowing a reasonable time after the usual supper hour, Bud stealthily approached the Stockwell residence from the rear, and entered the yard through the garden gate. There was a light in the kitchen, but Mrs. Stockwell was not there. Tiptoeing around the house, he heard voices on the porch. One was that of a stranger. But he easily made out that of the lawyer, too, and he stepped back. Mrs. Stockwell was not in sight.
“I’ll at least get my things,” he said to himself.
Making his way to the grape arbor, he shinned up to the summer kitchen roof, and, in bare feet, entered his room. Without venturing to strike a light, he felt around, got the articles he had come for, and then, stooping in a corner, by the light of a few matches, he wrote a note on the fly leaf of one of his few books.
“Dear Mother Stockwell,” it ran, “your husban’ has drove me away, and I got to go, but I’ll be back to see you some time you have been good to me and I’ll be good to you when I can so no more at presence from
“Bud.”
Opening the book on the table, he softly escaped over the roof. He was about to drop onto the grape arbor, when voices sounded immediately beneath him.
“Now, don’t wait for me, Mother,” said one of them—easily distinguished as that of the lawyer himself. “I’ll be out late on business.”
“’Tain’t about Bud, is it?” asked the other—Mrs. Stockwell.
“No,” sharply replied her husband. “But he caused it. It’s legal business. You can’t understand it.”