Hobo ambled across the lawn, stopped abruptly at the foot of the pear-tree, and there seated himself, looking up into the branches, and wagging his tail, with an air of having abundantly satisfied his own expectations. Peggy’s efforts to induce him to take up the trail were useless. Familiar as they all were with Aunt Abigail’s eccentricities, it was impossible to believe that she had improved the occasion of their absence to climb a pear-tree, especially as its fruit had been gathered weeks earlier. Moreover, even granting the possibility of so erratic a proceeding, she must have descended from her perch, unless she had continued her journey by airship. Peggy brought the worsted shawl, and renewed her appeals and commands, while Hobo continued to wag his tail, apparently under the impression that he was being praised for some remarkable achievement.
“There’s no use wasting any more time,” Amy cried at last, “on a dog as stupid as that one.”
“He never pretended to be a bloodhound,” said Peggy, her sense of justice driving her to the defence of her protégé. And then she dropped the shawl and ran to meet Jerry Morton, whose cheery whistle usually announced his coming some time in advance of his actual arrival.
Jerry had come to ask the opinion of the company as to the advisability of occupying the second intermission by a banjo duet. But before he could introduce the subject, his attention was claimed by the news of Aunt Abigail’s mysterious disappearance. As all the girls talked at once, the resulting explanation was somewhat confused, and Jerry gathered the impression that Hobo was being held responsible for driving Aunt Abigail into the pear-tree. Corrected on this point, his face suddenly acquired an expression of extreme seriousness.
“I saw long ’bout noon–but ’tain’t likely that had anything to do with it.”
“What was it?” cried the girls in chorus, each conscious of a chilly sensation in the neighborhood of the spine. And Amy added fiercely, “If you know anything, Jerry, tell it quick! We’re losing lots of time.”
“Well, it was a band of gypsies.”
There was a minute of awed silence. “But you don’t think–” Amy began, and paused helplessly.
“I don’t think anything but–well, they had three wagons–you know the kind–and in the bottom of the last one, I could see somebody lying stretched out and all covered over with a blanket. I thought most likely one of the men had been drinking and was just sleeping it off. But, of course–”
Jerry paused, overwhelmed at the sight of the horror depicted on the faces of his auditors. Vainly he racked his brain for a less harassing explanation of the fact that Aunt Abigail had disappeared some time during the forenoon, and at five o’clock was still missing. Peggy, her lips very white, attempted to reassure herself and the others, by attacking the theory he had suggested.