CHAPTER XII
OFF FOR RALLY HALL
As Teddy had clearly foreseen, all that had happened before was as nothing, when Uncle Aaron learned that his cherished watch was gone, probably forever.
He stormed and raged and wondered aloud what he had done that he should be saddled with such a graceless nephew. It was in vain that Mr. Rushton offered to make good the money loss.
“It isn’t a matter of money,” he shouted. “I’ve had that watch so long that it had come to be to me like a living thing. I wouldn’t have taken a dozen watches in exchange for it. Big fool that I was ever to come to Oldtown.”
All the amateur detective methods of the village constable ended in nothing. And as day after day passed without news, it began to be accepted as a settled fact that the culprits would never be found.
One happy day, however, came to lighten the gloom of Uncle Aaron. And that was the day that the Rushton boys said good-by to Oldtown and started for Rally Hall.
“Thank fortune,” he said to himself, “they’re going at last! A little longer and I’d be bankrupt or crazy, or both.”
But if Uncle Aaron was delighted to have them go, nobody else shared that feeling, except Jed Muggs.
That worthy was in high glee, as he drove up to the Rushton home on that eventful morning, to take them and their trunks to the railroad station at Carlette.