No wonder his face was white as he turned his head, and looked at his cousin.
“She says little Becky has been kidnapped!” was what he flung at Andy.
CHAPTER XVII—THE CARRYING OFF OF LITTLE BECKY
Andy fell back and stared at his cousin helplessly when he heard this startling announcement.
Meanwhile Frank had started in to assist Charley Woo cut the rope which had been so cruelly used to make the housekeeper a prisoner. Then he helped her to regain her feet, for she had sank down utterly exhausted as soon as released.
But Mrs. Ogden was a sensible woman, and she was trying the best she knew how to recover her speech; so that presently Frank thought it time to ask her something about what had happened.
“He must have crept in through the open window!” she gasped. “I thought the night wind had started blowing the blind, and got up to fix it, when he caught hold of me, and that was the last I knew until I came to my senses and found myself bound, and with a towel fastened across my face so that I could not cry out, when he was just passing out of the window. In the moonlight I could see that he held a bundle in his arms, and I knew what it must be. Oh! what will Mr. Witherspoon say when he learns how I have let that sweet child be taken away from under my eyes.”
That seemed to be the main cause for her distress; she thought nothing at all about her own sufferings, but was only concerned about what her employer would think because she had not been able to prevent the kidnapping of the child.
Though Andy had not yet recovered his voice, and was groping in the dark with regard to what it all meant, Frank, clearer visioned, had already made a pretty straight guess. He immediately started to ask a few questions, and each one of them went straight to the point.
“Did you see the man clearly, Mrs. Ogden?” he demanded; and somehow the housekeeper seemed to feel something of the same confidence in Frank that his manner nearly always produced in those who were in distress.