"You mustn't run away, or you'll get me into trouble, Luke," said the good-natured constable.
"It's the last thing I'd be willing to do, Mr. Perkins," said Luke, promptly. "Then everybody would decide that I was guilty. I am innocent, and want a chance to prove it."
What was to be done with the tin box, was the next question.
"I will take it over to my house," said Squire Duncan.
"I object," said Mr. Beane.
"Do you doubt my integrity?" demanded the bank president, angrily.
"No; but it is obviously improper that any one of us should take charge of the box before it has been opened and its contents examined. We are not even certain that it is the one missing from the bank."
As Mr. Beane was a lawyer, Prince Duncan, though unwillingly, was obliged to yield. The box, therefore, was taken to the bank and locked up in the safe till wanted.
It is hardly necessary to say that the events at the cottage of Mrs. Larkin, and Luke's arrest, made a great sensation in the village. The charge that Luke had robbed the bank was received not only with surprise, but with incredulity. The boy was so well and so favorably known in Groveton that few could be found to credit the charge. There were exceptions, however. Melinda Sprague enjoyed the sudden celebrity she had achieved as the original discoverer of the thief who had plundered the bank. She was inclined to believe that Luke was guilty, because it enhanced her own importance.
"Most people call Luke a good boy," she said, "but there was always something about him that made me suspicious. There was something in his expression—I can't tell you what—that set me to thinkin' all wasn't right. Appearances are deceitful, as our old minister used to say."