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For an instant Jasper Parloe changed color and looked a bit worried. But it was only for an instant. Then he grinned again and his little eyes twinkled just as though he were amused. But Tom kept on, bluntly, saying: "We found something there, Parloe, and we came up here to see if it belongs to you." "What's that?" asked the man, drawing nearer. "I ain't lost nothing."
When the mill owner was obliged to be absent and people had come to have corn or wheat ground, paying for the milling instead of giving toll, Jasper had sometimes kept the money instead of turning it over to Mr. Potter. This had finally resulted in a quarrel between the two, and Mr. Potter had discharged Parloe without paying him for his last month's work.
They were more than half an hour in getting to the turn in the main road where she could observe the two green lights before the doctor's house. There the men put the stretcher down for a moment. Jasper Parloe grumblingly took his turn at carrying one end. "I never did see the use of boys, noway," he growled. "They's only an aggravation and vexation of speret.
But, altogether, it looked really as though they carried a limp sack between them. "Fust time I ever see that boy still," murmured Jasper Parloe. "Cracky! He's pale; ain't he?" said another man. Doctor Davison dropped on one knee beside the body as they laid it down. The lanterns were drawn together that their combined light might illuminate the spot.
"It was just fine of you, Tommy," Ruth said, admiringly. "But I'd let that Parloe tell anything he liked. Uncle Jabez never meant to run you down, I'm sure." "I tell you what," said Tom. "I'll go to him myself and talk with him. Guess I can do a little bargaining on my own hook. If I don't make him any trouble about my accident, he ought to let you and Helen be spoons again.
"Now, that's all nonsense, Jabe," exclaimed Jasper Parloe, wagging his head. "Ye know ye can't refuse me." "I do refuse you." "Then ye'll take the consequences, Jabe ye'll take the consequences. Ye know very well if I say the word to Mr. Cameron " "Get away from here!" commanded Potter, interrupting. "I want nothing to do with you."
But I know nothing about it. Jasper Parloe might have saved the box had be known about it; he was over there by the office when the water tore away the wall." "Jasper Parloe!" ejaculated Uncle Jabez, starting. "Was he here?" "He wasn't here long," chuckled Tom. "He thought the mill was going and he lit out in a hurry." Uncle Jabez made another despairing gesture and walked away.
"We'll let bygones be bygones, Mr. Potter," said Tom, good-humoredly. "I came out of it all right." "But you had no business to pay Jasper Parloe money for keeping still about it," said the miller, sourly. "Being bled by a blackmailer is never the action of a wise man. When he threatened me I went to your father at once and got ahead of Parloe.
"No-o," said Parloe, slowly. "It has your initials on it," said Helen, quickly. "That's odd, ain't it?" returned Parloe, standing where he was and not offering to touch the box. "But other people have the same initials that I have." His grin grew to huge proportions, and he looked so sly that nothing but his high, bony nose kept his two little eyes from running together and making one eye of it.
The girls and Tom were so excited that they could not enjoy the remainder of the nice things that Babette had packed in their lunch basket They were soon in the carriage, and Tubby was startled out of a pleasant dream and urged up the hilly road that led through the woods to the squatter's cabin, where Jasper Parloe had taken up his quarters after he had been discharged from employment at the Red Mill.
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