The two brothers vanished. Tommy Candy, still standing on the threshold, stared after them with his mouth wide open, and slowly rumpled his hair till it stood on end in elfish spikes, as it had done in his childhood.
"I swan!" said Tommy Candy. "I swan to everlastin' gosh! the Dutch is beat this time!"
CHAPTER VIII.
MR. PINDAR
Tommy Candy was about to reënter the house, when something seemed to attract his attention. He gazed keenly through the soft darkness at the house opposite; then he uttered a low whistle, and, leaning on his stick (for Miss Penny was right; poor Tommy was very lame, and had climbed his last steeple), made his way down the garden-path to the gate. "Annie Lizzie, is that you?" he asked, in a low tone.
"Hush!" the answer came in a soft voice. "Yes, Tommy. How you scared me! I didn't think there was any one up. Ma thought she heard something, and wanted I should look out and see if there was any one round."
"You tell her the Sheriff has come to get Isaac," said Tommy, "and he's stopping with us overnight. He'll be over in the morning, tell her, with the handcuffs, bright and early."
"Oh, hush, Tommy! you hadn't ought to talk so!" said the soft voice, and a slender figure slipped across the road in the dark, and came to the gate. "Honest, Tommy, I wish you wouldn't talk so about Isaac and the rest of 'em. It don't seem right."
"Annie Lizzie," said Tommy, "I never said a word against ary one of 'em, so long as I thought they was your kin; but since I found out that you was only adopted, why, I don't see no reason why or wherefore I shouldn't give 'em as good as they deserve, now I don't."