“Yes!” came the reply. “You see, I used to think highly of Peleg, and it hurts me to be keeping this suspicion against him. Rob, I kind of made up my mind to try him out, test him, as you might say.”
“Well, that mightn’t be a bad idea, though pretty hard on Peleg,” admitted Rob. “Still, it’s better to know the truth and have done with it. What have you thought of trying so as to find out whether he would be guilty of stealing or not?”
“I feel a bit ashamed of doing such a thing, too,” confessed Ralph, a red spot showing in his cheeks, “but let’s hope it turns out a good thing for him. Listen, Rob. Here’s my pocketbook, you see? Well, it contains just eleven dollars, which I’m going to count before you, and mostly in small bills, at that. Now, I mean to drop this where Peleg is bound to come across it, while we watch and see what he does. Are you game for that?”
Rob scratched his head, and made a grimace.
“It does seem sort of cruel, to tell you the truth,” he said, presently; “but, after all, good may come of it. As I said before, better know the worst at once, and then either get rid of Peleg, or else beg his pardon for suspecting him of being a thief. Yes, I’ll go you in the game, Ralph. I know your intentions are of the right sort.”
They shook hands on that. Then Ralph proceeded to bait the trap by dropping the pocketbook in plain sight, where he said he knew Peleg Pinder would soon be passing while carrying out his usual duties, which had to be attended to with clock-like fidelity on that farm where everything was run on schedule plans.
“I’ve baited many a trap for wild animals before this,” Ralph further remarked, with a shrug of his shoulders that told of the dislike he had for the job, “but this is the first time I ever set one for a human being. I hope it’ll be the last one. I don’t fancy doing it at all.”
So they concealed themselves in a convenient place nearby, where their presence would never be suspected, and then waited to see what would happen. Just as Ralph had figured, Peleg hove in sight within ten minutes. He was carrying two buckets of something for the young pigs that had to be fed so many times a day in order to cause them to grow fast.
He came to a sudden pause, and the buckets were set down violently. Another second and Ralph gripped Rob’s shoulder as they saw the hired boy pounce upon the pocketbook with just the eagerness any one might have shown.
It was a tense moment. Even Rob admitted that he held his breath while wondering what Peleg would do with his find. They saw him look around, as though wondering whether any one had noticed him pick it up. Rob almost feared that the boy would hasten to conceal the pocketbook in his shirt, which would be pretty positive evidence that he was tempted to keep it.