"He's going," remarked Amy. "I wonder if he had enough?"
"I think so," replied Betty. "Now, girls, we must hurry. We have been delayed, and—"
"I'm so sorry," put in Mollie. "It was my fault, and—"
"Don't think of it, my dear!" begged Grace. "Any of us might have forgotten the lunch, just as you did."
As they walked past the place which the tramp had selected for his dining room, Betty saw some papers on the ground. They appeared to be letters, and, rather idly, she picked them up. She looked into one or two of the torn envelopes.
"I wouldn't do that," said Grace. "Maybe those are private letters. He must have forgotten them. I wonder where he has gone? Perhaps we can catch him—he might need these papers. But I wouldn't read them, Betty."
"They're nothing but advertising circulars," retorted the Little Captain.
"Nothing very private about them. I guess he threw them all away."
She was about to let them fall from her hand, when a bit of paper fluttered from one envelope. Picking it up Betty was astonished to read on the torn portion the words:
"I cannot carry out that deal I arranged with you, because I have had the misfortune to lose five hundred dollars and I shall have to—"
There the paper, evidently part of a letter to someone, was torn off.
There were no other words.