Part 17 (2/2)
”Nonsense!” exclaimed her husband cheerfully. ”Sammy sort of fancied himself in that picture, that is all. He is not without his share of vanity.”
”That is what _you_ say,” complained Sammy's mother. ”But I just feel that something dreadful has happened to him this time.”
”Never mind,” called Neale, starting the engine, ”we'll go over the hills and far away, but we'll find some trace of him, Mrs. Pinkney.
Sammy can't have hidden himself so completely that we cannot discover where he has been and where he is going.”
That is exactly what they did. They flew about the environs of Milton in a rapid search for the truant. Wherever they stopped and made inquiries for the first hour or so, however, they gained no word of Sammy.
It was three o'clock, and they were down toward the ca.n.a.l on the road leading to Hampton Mills, when they gained the first possible clue of the missing one. And that clue was more than twenty-four hours old.
A storekeeper remembered a boy who answered to Sammy's description buying something to eat the day before, and sitting down on the store step to eat it. That boy carried a heavy extension-bag and went on after he had eaten along the Hampton Mills road.
”We've struck his trail!” declared Neale with satisfaction. ”Don't you think so, Mr. Pinkney?”
”How did he pay you for the things he bought?” asked the father of the runaway, addressing the storekeeper again. ”What kind of money did he have?”
”He had ten cent pieces, I remember. And he had them tied in a handkerchief. Nicked his bank before he started, did he?” and the man laughed.
”That is exactly what he did,” admitted Mr. Pinkney, returning hurriedly to the car. ”Drive on, Neale. I guess we are on the right trail.”
CHAPTER XIV--ALMOST HAD HIM
Neale drove almost recklessly for the first few miles after pa.s.sing the roadside store; but the eyes of all three people in the car were very wide open and their minds observant. Anything or anybody that might give trace of the truant Sammy were scrutinized.
”He was at that store before noon,” Agnes shouted into Neale's ear.
”How long before he would be hungry again?”
”No knowing. Pretty soon, of course,” admitted her chum. ”But I heard that storekeeper tell Mr. Pinkney that the boy bought more than he could eat at once and he carried the rest away in a paper bag.”
”That is so,” admitted Mr. Pinkney, leaning over the forward seat.
”But he has an appet.i.te like a boa constrictor.”
”A _boy_-constrictor,” chuckled Neale. ”I'll say he has!”
”He would not likely stop anywhere along here to buy more food, then,”
Agnes said.
”He could have gone off the road, however, for a dozen different things,” said the missing boy's father. ”That child has got more crotchets in his head than you can shake a stick at. There is no knowing--”
”Hold on!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Neale suddenly. ”There are some kids down there by that pond. Suppose I run down and interview them?”
”I don't see anybody among them who looks like Sammy,” observed Agnes, standing up in the car to look.
”Never mind. You go ahead, Neale. They will talk to you more freely, perhaps, than they will to me. Boys are that way.”
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