“Yes,” said Hetty. “I’m sorry he didn’t. I have a letter for the Sheriff to give him, and wanted to get rid of the thing. It is important, and I fancy, from what my father told me, if any of the homestead-boys got it they could make trouble for us. Chris is to ride in with it and hand it to the Sheriff.”
“I wouldn’t like a letter of that kind lying round,” said Miss Schuyler. “Where did you put it, Hetty?”
Hetty laughed. “Where nobody would ever find it—under some clothes of mine. Talking about it makes one uneasy. Pull out the second drawer in the bureau, Flo.”
Miss Schuyler did so, and Hetty turned over a bundle of daintily embroidered linen. Then, her face grew very grave, she laid each article back again separately.
“Nothing there!” said Miss Schuyler.
Hetty’s fingers quivered. “Pull the drawer out, Flo. No. Never mind anything. Shake them out on the floor.”
It was done, and a litter of garments lay scattered about them, but no packet appeared, and Hetty sat down limply, very white in the face.
“It was there,” she said, “by the wallet with the dollars. It must have got inside somehow, and I sent the wallet to Larry. This is horrible, Flo.”
“Think!” said Miss Schuyler. “You couldn’t have put it anywhere else?”
“No,” said Hetty faintly. “If the wrong people got it, it would turn out the Sheriff and make an outcry everywhere. That is what I was told, though I don’t know what it was about.”