Greenacres, that ten
acre lot represented a treasure trove in the month of August when
huckleberries and blueberries were ripe. Shad said knowing the proper time
to pick huckleberries was just born in one, so the girls had guarded the
old pasture from any marauding youngsters or wayside peddlers.

"You've got to keep a good eye out for them this year," Shad warned them.
"Last year wasn't good for huckleberries, apples or nuts, but this is
going to be a regular jubilee harvest. Them bushes up there are hanging so
full that you can put up quarts and quarts and quarts of them and send
huckleberry pies to the heathen all winter if you want to."

And he had likewise warned them that that particular berry patch had been
famous throughout the countryside ever since the days when Greenacres had
belonged to the Trowbridges. Several times when it had happened to be a
good year for the huckleberry crop, raiders had swept down and culled the
best of the harvest. Not from around the near-by villages had they come,
but from the small towns, ten or fifteen miles away.

"Them mill boys and girls," Shad declared, "just think that the Lord grows
things in the country for anybody to come along and pick. They don't pay
no more attention to a 'No Trespassing' sign than they would to a
woodchuck's tracks. The only thing to do is watch, and when you see 'em
turn in through the bars off the main road, you come down and let me know,
and telephone over for Hannibal Hicks to come and ketch 'em. Hannibal
ain't doin' nothin' to earn his fifteen dollars a year as constable 'round
here, and we ought to help him out if we can."

So to-day, it was Kit's turn to watch the huckleberry patch from the
cupola room, and along towards three o'clock she beheld a trig-looking
red-wheeled, black-bodied wagon, drawn unmistakably by a livery horse,
pull up at the pasture bars, and its driver calmly and shamelessly hitch
there. He took out of the wagon not a burlap bag, but a tan leather hand
bag of generous size, and also something else that looked like a capacious
box with a handle to it.

"Camouflage," said Kit to herself, scornfully. "He's going to fill them
with our berries, and then make believe he's selling books."

Down-stairs she sped with the news. Doris was out at the barn negotiating
peace terms with a half-grown calf that she had been trying to tame for
days, and which still persisted in butting its head every time she came
near it with friendly