“Well, even so, they might not have run away if it hadn’t happened that that was the day Zara’s father was arrested. Apparently with an old miser and money lender called Weeks as the moving spirit, a charge of counterfeiting was cooked up against him, and they took him off to my town to jail.”
“But it’s in another state!”
“United States case, you see. My town’s the centre of the Federal district. Zara and Bessie happened to get on to this, and when they crept up to Zara’s house to find out if it was true, they overheard enough to show them that it was–and, what was more, that old Weeks meant to get himself appointed Zara’s guardian, and take her home with him.”
“Oh, that was his game, eh?”
“Yes, and if you’d ever seen him, you wouldn’t blame Zara for being ready to run away before she went with him. He’s the meanest old codger you ever saw. But he had a big pull in that region, because he held mortgages on about all the farms, and he could do about as he liked.”
“Well, I don’t see why they didn’t have a perfect right to run away,” said Trenwith, “legally and morally. They didn’t owe anything in the way of gratitude to any of these people.”
“That’s just what I said!” declared Eleanor, vehemently. “I looked into the story they told me, and I found out it was perfectly true. So we helped them, and took them into this state.”
“Yes. And old Weeks chased them, and got Zara away from them once. Bessie tricked him and got her back,” said Jamieson. “And then the old rip got a court order making him Zara’s guardian, but he tried to serve it across the state line, and got dished for his trouble. So it looked as if they’d shaken him pretty well.”
“I should say so! Do you mean that he kept it up after that?”
“He certainly did! And he got pretty powerful help too. Here’s where the part of it that ought to interest you really begins. Miss Mercer took the two girls home with her, and almost at once, in the middle of the night, Zara was spirited away. At first we thought she’d been kidnapped but later it turned out that she’d been deceived, and gone with them willingly.”