"Huh?" queried the boy, with curiosity, for he saw that something unusual had occurred.
Janice gravely told him whom she had seen in the sheepfold. "And, Marty, I believe he must have been up there all night—sleeping outdoors such weather as this. What for, do you suppose?"
Marty professed inability to explain; but after he had taken the milk in to his mother, he slipped away and ran up to the sheep pasture himself.
"I say, Janice," he said, grinning, when he came back. "I can solve the mystery, I can."
"What mystery?" asked his cousin, who was flushed now with helping her aunt get breakfast.
"The mystery of the 'early worm' that you saw this mornin'." He brought his hand from behind him and displayed an empty, amber-colored flask on which was a gaudy label announcing its contents to have been whiskey and sold by "L. Parraday, Polktown."
"Oh, dear! Is that the trouble with the Besmith boy?" murmured
Janice.
"That's how he came to lose his job with Massey."
"Poor fellow! He looked dreadful!"
"Oh, he's a bad egg," said her cousin, carelessly.