“Yes I do,” said Harry. “I mean that’s what you’re accused of, but I don’t believe it!”
Joe sank into a chair.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAGIC EGG
“Don’t take it so to heart, Joe,” begged Harry, after a moment’s pause. “I didn’t mean to spring it on you this way. I thought maybe you knew something about it.”
“I didn’t know a thing!” exclaimed Joe. Professor Rosello and the boy helper were busy putting away their apparatus, so Joe and Harry could talk together for a time. “How did they come to accuse me?” Joe asked, after a pause.
“Well, you ran away, you know,” began Harry. “Of course that wasn’t so bad, considering what you had to put up with. And the same night you went off, the deacon was robbed.”
“Of much?”
“To hear him tell it you’d think it was. About a hundred dollars of his money and nearly forty dollars of his wife’s.”
“She kept hers in the clock and his was in the desk,” said Joe.
“Better not let any one else hear you say that,” Harry cautioned him.