“What?” chorused the listeners in a breath.
“I told yer I shouldn’t kem back till I had l’arnt sumthin’, and I an’t, that, sure.”
“It is about Ralph, I know it is!” exclaimed Mary Bede, springing to his side with a glad look on her fair countenance. “What have you learned, uncle? Tell me, quick.”
“I can prove that he didn’t steal the boat,” was the triumphant reply.
“I knew that he didn’t. But tell us what you have learned.”
“Waal, waal, it’s cur’us, but it’s true. You know that the three boats were left down on the shore as usual. Waal, I hev been watchin’ them ever since an hour afore sundrop.”
“Why, Jarius Bede, and we here a-waitin’ and a-worritin’ ’bout yer.”
“Waal, it’s worth the time, I can tell yer.”
While Jarius Bede is telling what he has witnessed we would say that considerable excitement had been occasioned among the few settlers in that vicinity by the frequent disappearance of boats from the shores of the lake. No one could tell where they had gone, but they were as effectually lost as if the water had swallowed them up.
Finally, Mary Bede’s lover, Ralph Horn, was accused of stealing, or destroying them, which amounted to the same thing, so long as they were irretrievably lost.