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"Poor fellow!" sighed Janice. "I don't know. Oh, I suppose he's to be pitied," said Frank Bowman, with some disgust. "Anyhow, Besmith got thoroughly desperate, went down to the Inn after his interview with his former employer, and spent all the money he had over Lem's bar. He didn't come home at all that night "
"Nelson Haley openin' aour school and takin' up the good work ag'in where he laid it daown, is suthin' that oughter be noted a-plenty," declared Mr. Dexter. "And I will say for 'em, that committee reinstated him before anybody heard anythin' abeout Jack Besmith havin' stole the gold coins.
"Oh!" exclaimed Janice, remembering suddenly where Jack Besmith had probably slept off his debauch, for she had seen him asleep in her uncle's sheepfold on that particular Saturday morning. "He's a pretty poor specimen, I suppose," said the engineer, eyeing Janice rather curiously. "He's one of the weak ones. But there are others!" Janice was silent for a moment.
"Oh! he's as important now as a Billy-goat on an ash-heap. You'd think, to hear him, that he'd stole the coins himself only he didn't have no chance't. He and Jack Besmith wouldn't ha' done a thing to that bunch of money no, indeed! if they'd got hold of it." "Why, Marty!" put in Janice; "you shouldn't say that."
"The mystery of the 'early worm' that you saw this mornin'." He brought his hand from behind him and displayed an empty, amber-colored flask on which was a gaudy label announcing its contents to have been whiskey and sold by "L. Parraday, Polktown." "Oh, dear! Is that the trouble with the Besmith boy?" murmured Janice. "That's how he came to lose his job with Massey." "Poor fellow!
"It is too bad about young Besmith," Janice said, shaking her head. "He is only a boy." "Yep. But a month or so in the woods without drink will do him a heap of good." That very evening, however, Janice saw Jack Besmith in town. From Marty she learned that he did not stay long. "He came in for booze that's what he come for," said her cousin, in disgust.
She remained in hiding until she saw Jack Besmith stumble out of the sheep pasture and down the hill behind the Day stables taking a retired route toward the village. Coming down into the barnyard once more, Janice met Marty with a foaming milk pail. "Hullo, early bird!" he sang out. "Did you catch the worm this morning?" Janice shuddered a trifle. "I believe I did, Marty," she confessed.
Who knows?" Janice concluded, with a sigh. The thought of Sim Howell mocking Jim Narnay reminded her of the latter's unfortunate family. She had been only once to the little cottage near Pine Cove since Narnay had gone into the woods with Trimmins and Jack Besmith. Nor had she been able to see Dr.
But it was of Jack Besmith, the ex-drug clerk, that Janice Day thought as she sped on toward the seminary and not of the opening of the campaign against the liquor traffic in Polktown, which she felt had really been organized on this morning.
"Why why, that's Jack Besmith! He worked for Mr. Massey all Winter. What is he doing here?" murmured Janice. She did not rise and expose herself to the fellow's gaze. For one thing, the ex-drug clerk looked very rough in both dress and person. His uncombed hair was littered with straw and bits of corn-blades from the fodder on which he had lain. His clothing was stained.
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