The first was found to contain half a dozen new pocket-books, and a bolt of fine linen that had never been cut; and the second was made up principally of razors, revolvers, powder- and shot-flasks and jack-knives.
“Now, I am astonished,” said Uncle Ruben; and the word he used conveyed but a very faint idea of the bewilderment and confusion into which his mind had been thrown by the sight of the articles upon which he had so unexpectedly stumbled. “I never did b’lieve that George was to blame for them stores bein’ broke into, but what is a feller to think of this, I’d like to know?”
Right on the heels of this question came others that were just as hard to answer.
Should he put the bundles back as he found them, and let matters take their own course? or, would it be better to await George’s return and confront him with the evidence of his guilt, at the same time promising never to lisp a word of it to anybody if the boy would consent to be bound out to him until he was twenty-one years old?
“There’s objections to both them plans,” thought Uncle Ruben, after he had spent some minutes in trying to find a way out of his quandary. “George had oughter be punished for refusin’ to go home with me like I wanted him to do, an’ if he is shut up for a thief I want him to know that I had a hand in it. That’s what I bring them chickens up here for. But if he is shut up, he won’t never come nigh me arter he gets out, an’ I ain’t by no means sart’in that I want him to; for, jest as like as not, he’ll go to stealin’ from me. Mebbe I had better go home and sleep on it.”
Having come to this conclusion, Uncle Ruben hastily tied up the bundles again, tossed them back into the hole and covered them up.
He had already wasted considerable time, and being anxious to reach home before dark, he did not stop to bury the chickens. He simply threw them into the bushes, marking the spot on which they fell, so that he could easily find them again if circumstances should require it, and then he mounted his horse and rode away.
Meanwhile, George Edwards was sitting on a log by the side of the road that led from the village to Mr. Stebbins’ farm, waiting as patiently as he could for the coming of his expected friends, Bob Howard and Dick Langdon.
Remembering his last interview with the choleric old man, and the orders he had given regarding his “vagabond” acquaintances, George had landed with his scow in a little cove near the promontory, and made his way by a roundabout course to the road, in order to intercept his expected guests before they crossed the sheep pasture.
He did not want them to be insulted, as he knew they would be if Mr. Stebbins should catch them on his grounds; but still he need not have taken so much pains to prevent it, for he did not see Dick and Bob that night.