So I stole in the gloom around behind the buildings of the village and retraced my trail up through the judge’s orchard. While I was still some distance from the mansion I heard considerable of a hullabaloo above which rose the shrill voice of “Squealing John” Runnels, who was issuing warnings about “laying a whip on that hoss.” Then there was a racketing and a splintering and down past me came an outfit which I recognized. The horse was certainly the brute my uncle had doctored into false shapeliness; the mane was dangling in shreds where the apple-tree limbs had raked. Runnels, his woman’s hat hanging on his back, was kneeling on the bottom of the wagon, both hands full of false hair which he had reaped from the horse’s tail in effort to check the animal; he had lost the reins and they were dragging uselessly on the ground.
Not far from me the wagon was flailed against a tree and Mr. Runnels was violently dislodged; but I judged that he was not injured because, after rolling over and over on the turf, he rose and ran away with his skirts gathered around his waist.
It was evident that my uncle’s plot had failed ingloriously.
I could understand the flash of fresh spirit in that moribund horse; Runnels had shrieked warnings regarding a whip; a lash laid across those tingling water-blisters must have made that poor old pelter develop a hankering to outfly Pegasus. He disappeared with fragments of the thills clattering on his heels.
Then there were immediate and further developments in that orchard. I thought for a startled moment that it was enchanted ground. White figures began to pop up here and there and came flocking to me. I found myself surrounded by the Skokums, wearing the pillowcase masks I had furnished.
They seemed to think I had some information regarding the runaway or was concerned in it, but I had no news to give out. One of them brought the old felt hat with its broken feather.
“I didn’t know there was any woman in these parts who could cuss like that one did when she went down through the orchard,” said one of the Sortwell boys. “I reckon that detective is finding mysteries piling in on him pretty thick.”
“What detective?” I asked.
“The one that Judge Kingsley has been hiding in his house. That detective was hid in a closet in the office to-day when the judge was asking questions of us.”
“How do you know he was there?”