please hurry!"

Then I listened, and all I could hear was a rat gnawing at a corner of
the granary under the hay. Might as well have saved its teeth, it
would strike a strip of tin when it got through, but of course it
couldn't know that. Then I went to every hole around the haystack,
where the cattle had eaten; none were deep yet, like they would be
later in the season, and all the way I begged of Leon to come out.
Once a rooster screamed, flew in my face and scared me good, but no
Leon; so I tried the corn crib, the implement shed, and the wood house,
climbing the ladder with the money still gripped in one hand. Then I
slipped in the front door, up the stairs, and searched the garret, even
away back where I didn't like to very well. At last I went to the
dining-room, and I don't think either father or mother had moved, while
Sabethany turned to stone looked good compared with them. Seemed as if
it would have been better if they'd cried, or scolded, or anything but
just sit there as they did, when you could see by their moving once in
a while that they were alive. In the kitchen Candace and May finished
the morning work, and both of them cried steadily. I slipped to May,
"Whose money was it?" I whispered. "Father's, or the county's, or the
church's?"

"All three," said May.

"The traveller took it."

"How would he find it? None of us knew there was such a place before."

"Laddie seemed to know!"

"Oh Laddie! Father trusts him about everything."

"They don't think HE told?"

"Of course not, silly. It's Leon who is gone!"

"Leon may have told about the Station!" I cried. "He didn't touch the
money. He never touched it!"

Then I went straight to father. Keeping a secret was one thing; seeing
the only father you had look like that, was another. I held out the
money.

"There's one piece old Even So didn't get, anyway," I said. "Found it
on the floor of the Station, where it was stuck to the can. And I
thought Leon must be hiding for fear he'd be whipped for telling, but
I've hunted where we usually hide, and promised him everything under
the sun if he'd come out; but he didn't, so I guess that traveller man
must have used the gun to make him go along."

Father sat and stared at me. He never offered to touch the money, not
even when I held it against his hand. So I saw that money wasn't the
trouble, else he'd have looked quick enough to see how much I had.
They were thinking about Leon bein