“Yes! what have you done with ’em?” cried Jack, choking with impatience and anger.
“O, to be sure! I believe I put ’em on the ground under the lilac-bush; you was so long in the room, I got tired of holdin’ on ’em; and darned if I didn’t forgit all about ’em!”
Jack was incensed at this negligence. “That’s the way you help a fellow, is it?”
“Didn’t we help you?” said Hank. “You wouldn’t have got away at all if it hadn’t been for me.”
“You!” retorted Jack; “if you had only caught me at first, when I was getting out of the window, I shouldn’t have had any trouble! But you waited till the old man got hold of me; and now I’ve lost hat and shoes and stockings and money!”
Hank answered indignantly, “Won’t you believe me when I tell you your money is all right? You sha’n’t be robbed of a dollar. I’m sorry about the stockin’s; but your hat and shoes you can find, I suppose, jest where Tug left ’em.”
“If Tug will go with me!”
“What’s the use of two goin’?” said Tug. “We’ll be lookin’ for Cub, and meet you at the corner of the woods.” To this Hank agreed.
Seeing there was nothing else to be done, Jack ran back across the pasture to Peternot’s garden, and was creeping up behind the quince-trees, when he heard a voice, and saw a glimmer of light approaching around the corner of the house. Then appeared Squire Peternot, carrying a lantern, followed by his nephew Byron, armed with a heavy club. They were looking along the ground and beating the shrubbery. Jack didn’t know whether to run away, or lie flat on the grass. While he was hesitating, he heard the old man say, “’Twas robbery, downright robbery! House-breakin’,—a clear case! The rogues have got off with their booty, but this ain’t the last on’t, they’ll find!”
“State-prison job,” replied the nephew, “if I know anything about law. The fact that a piece of property is in litigation don’t justify one claimant in entering burglariously the premises of another claimant and stealing said piece of property.”