ared. Whether
he had hopped Number 10, bound north, or Number 43, bound south, both of
which trains had pulled out of Cheslow within the hour, nobody could be
sure.

Tom returned to the Red Mill at dusk, forced to report utter failure.

"If that bum actor stole your play, Ruth, he's got clear way with it," Tom
said bluntly. "I'm awfully sorry----"

"Does that help?" demanded his sister snappishly, as though it were
somewhat Tom's fault. "You go home, Tom. I'm going to stay with Ruthie
to-night," and she followed her chum into the bedroom to which she had
fled at Tom's announcement of failure.

"Jimminy!" murmured Tom to the old miller who was still at the supper
table. "And we aren't even sure that that fellow did steal the scenario."

"Humph!" rejoined Uncle Jabez. "You'll find, if you live to be old enough,
young feller, that women folks is kittle cattle. No knowing how they'll
take anything. That pen cost five dollars, I allow; but them papers only
had writing on 'em, and it does seem to me that what you have writ once
you ought to be able to write again. That's the woman of it. She don't say
a thing about that pen, Ruthie don't."

However, Tom Cameron saw farther into the mystery than Uncle Jabez
appeared to. And after a day or two, with Ruth still "moping about like a
moulting hen," as the miller expressed it, the young officer felt that he
must do something to change the atmosphere of the Red Mill farmhouse.

"Our morale has gone stale, girls," he declared to his sister and Ruth.
"Worrying never did any good yet."

"That's a true word, Sonny," said Aunt Alvirah, from her chair. "'Care
killed the cat.' my old mother always said, and she had ten children to
bring up and a drunken husband who was a trial. He warn't my father. He
was her second, an' she took him, I guess, 'cause he was ornamental. He
was a sign painter when he worked. But he mostly advertised King Alcohol
by painting his nose red.

"We children sartain sure despised that man. But mother was faithful to
her vows, and she made quite a decent member of the community of that man
before she left off. And, le's see! We was talkin' about cats, warn't we?"

"You were, Aunty dear," said Ruth, laughing for the first time in several
days.

"Hurrah!" said Tom, plunging head-first into his idea. "That's just what I
wanted to hear."

"What?" demanded Helen.

"I have wanted to hear Ruth laugh. And we all need to laugh. Why, we are
becoming a trio of