"I—I don't mean that gal," quavered Cap'n Ira. "I mean the real Ida May."
He half tumbled off the ladder into Tunis Latham's arms. He clung to the young man tightly, and, although it was dark in the barn, Tunis could have sworn that there were tears on the old man's cheeks.
"Don't you know we've got the right Ida May with us at last—Prudence's niece that has come here to visit for a while and play lady? Yes, you was fooled; we was bamboozled. That—that other gal, Tunis, is a real bad one, I ain't no doubt. She pulled the wool over your eyes and made a monkey of most everybody, it seems. She—"
"Who are you talking about?" cried Tunis, in his alarm almost shaking the old man.
"I'm telling you the girl you brought down here, thinking she was Ida May Bostwick, turned out to be somebody else. I don't know who. Anyway, she ain't no relation of Prudence or me. I ain't blaming you none, boy; she told us we musn't blame you, for you didn't know the truth about her, either."
"Cap'n Ira, where is she?" demanded the younger man hoarsely.
"She ain't here. She's gone. She left four nights ago—after Ida May had remembered what she'd done in that big store in Boston. Oh, she admitted it—"
"You mean to tell me she's gone? That you don't know where she is?" almost shouted Tunis.
"Easy, boy! Remember I got some feeling yet in them arms you was squeezing. It ain't our fault she went. She left us in the night—stole out with just a bundle of clothes and things. Left, Prudence says, every enduring thing she'd got since she come here—that we give her."
Tunis groaned.