"How do you know, Bunny?"
"Because the tramps that scared us had red handkerchiefs on their necks just like that one down there. I'm sure they were the same tramps, Grandma."
The two children, grandma and Mother Brown went outside, under the pantry window. There lay the red handkerchief on the ground, and it was twisted up in just the way a handkerchief would be twisted if it had been around any one's neck.
"Those tramps didn't get enough to eat out of our baskets," said Bunny Brown, "so they came here and took grandma's things. Let's go after 'em! I'll get Splash and——"
Bunny Brown started to run after his dog, that had gone out to the barn with Bunker Blue. But his mother caught the little boy by the arm.
"You had better stay right here," she said. "You are too small to go chasing off after tramps, even with Splash. We'll let Papa Brown and grandpa find the bad men, if they are still here."
Daddy Brown and grandpa came back from the barn, where they had been putting away the horses, and they were told of the missing cake, pies and crullers. Then they looked at the red handkerchief, lying where one of the tramps must have dropped it.
"Yes, I should not be surprised if the same tramps who scared the children came here and took your things, Mother," said Papa Brown. "They must have been frightened, and have run off in a hurry, to have dropped their handkerchief this way. We'll ask the hired man."
But the hired man had been working in the garden, some distance away from the house, and he had seen nothing of any tramps. He had come in to his dinner, and he said he had looked in the pantry then, and had noticed that the big cake was all right.
"Then the tramps came here after dinner, and after they were at the picnic grounds," said Grandpa Brown. "I must look around. They may be hiding in my barn, and sometimes tramps smoke in the hay, and set it on fire. We'll look for them."