“Stamps!”
Rob only repeated the word after the other, but there was a world of meaning connected with the way he did it. Like a flash there came to him the remembrance of the loss Ralph had claimed to have suffered, when he failed to discover the several packets of valuable stamps where he believed he had left them, ready for mailing back to a city dealer from whom he had received them for making selections.
Could it be possible that Peleg had yielded to some sudden temptation, and purloined those packets? Was his errand to Wyoming really to dispose of the stamps, after he had taken them from the sheets to which they had been slenderly attached?
Rob was conscious of a chilly feeling around the region of his heart as he continued to watch the boy standing there. It was not difficult to imagine Peleg battling with the strong temptation. That might account for his looking dubiously up at the building, and hesitating before taking a fatal step in wrong-doing.
“Well, he’s gone in!” said Sim, presently. “I guess Peleg really had some business in town, and didn’t mean to go to the show. I c’n see that all sorts of people have offices in that building, lawyers, doctors and even a curio dealer. Do we go on now, Ralph, or are you meaning to wait for Peleg?”
“Oh! we’re going on, all right, Sim; Peleg said nothing about wanting to attend the entertainment. Perhaps, after he’s through with his important business here he may drift back to the circus lot. That would be more in his line, I guess. Come on.”
“What were those packets of stamps worth, Ralph?” Rob managed to ask without being overheard by any of the others, for Tubby and Andy chanced to be engaged in a little dispute concerning something that had arisen, as with Sim they trudged along ten feet or so in the rear.
“Something like fifteen dollars, I should say,” replied the other, gloomily.
Rob knew that it was not so much the value of the missing packets that bothered Ralph Jeffords as the fact that a boy to whom his father had been so kind had apparently betrayed a trust, and stolen from the son of his benefactor.
“And you think Peleg has been pretty keen on making money, do you?” continued the scout leader.