“Not that Vandegrift—you don’t mean him?” he said so angrily that Betty feared that he, too, was in the conspiracy against poor Dr. Vandegrift.
“Yes, sir, Dr. Vandegrift,” she returned with dignity.
But his eyes looked very kind and his face was as sorry as his voice as he said: “You don’t mean, little girl, that you were one of the many persons that were taken in by that—er—scoundrel?”
The girl looked up anxiously.
“You—you know him, sir?” she asked falteringly, not sure that she wasn’t acting the part of a traitor.
“I don’t know him to my sorrow as about half the factory people here do,” he returned. “That scamp cleaned a pile o’ money out of this town before he was arrested, believe me.”
“Arrested!” cried Betty, appalled.
“Yes, arrested, though he slipped right out from under the sheriff’s nose and made his getaway,—a slippery chap, he! And it seems he’s wanted in half a dozen other places where he was doing the same thing as he was here. The very day after he was arrested here, they came from up-State after him.”
Betty fixed the stranger with a puzzled look in her gentle brown eyes.
“Do you mean that he wasn’t a good man, sir?” she asked.