“Dear Schotzie: I’m sorry I have to leave this way, but it has to be. If any one inquires for me don’t tell them anything. Don’t even tell them I’m gone! You will soon receive a telegram. Just believe in me.
Your affectionate
Uncle Tod.”
“He took some of his things,” declared Mrs. Dalton, after a hasty look through the closet. “He must be going to stay for a while.”
“But where has he gone?” asked Rick.
“You know about as much as I do,” his mother replied. “I never was more surprised in all my life! I can’t understand it. Oh, what’s this?” she exclaimed as something fell with a thud from the top of a closet shelf where Uncle Tod kept his clean shirts—some of which he had taken with him. “What is it?” she repeated, and she stepped back from a green object that had rolled to the middle of the floor. “Is it a rat, Rick?”
“No, it isn’t a rat,” the boy answered with a laugh. “It’s a cabbage leaf and rolled up in it is a rock and a bullet, and—”
“Oh, Rick, a bullet—”
“Don’t be afraid, Mother, it’s just the lead part, and can’t go off. See.”
He opened the now wilted cabbage leaf and showed the curious rock, which, as he now noticed, had some shining bits of metal imbedded in it. He took the lead bullet in his hand and held it out to show his mother it was harmless for it was out of the explosive cartridge shell.