Part 19 (1/2)

”Some pretty mess--I'll tell the world!” groaned Neale O'Neil, shutting off the engine, while Agnes clung to his arm grimly to keep from sliding out into the ditch, too.

”Now, you _have_ done it!” shrilled the girl.

”Thanks. Many thanks. I expected you to say that, Aggie,” he replied.

”M-mm! Well, I don't suppose you meant to--”

”No use worrying about how it was done or who did it,” interposed Mr.

Pinkney, briskly getting out of the tonneau on the left side. ”The question is, how are we going to right the car and get under way again?”

”A truer word was never spoken,” agreed Neale O'Neil. ”Come on, Agnes.

We'll creep out on this side, too. That's it. Looks to me, Mr.

Pinkney, as though we should need a couple of good, strong levers to pry up the wheels. You and I can do that while Agnes gets in under the wheel and manipulates the mechanism, as it were.”

”You are the boss, here, Neale,” said the older man, immediately entering the wood on the right side of the road. ”I see a stick here that looks promising.”

He pa.s.sed under the broadly spreading branches of a huge chestnut tree. There were several of these monsters along the edge of the wood.

Mr. Pinkney suddenly shouted something, and dropped upon his knees between two outcropping roots of the tree.

”What is it, Mr. Pinkney?” cried Agnes, running across the road.

Their neighbor appeared, erect again. In his hand he bore the well-remembered extension-bag which Sammy Pinkney had so often borne away from home upon his truant escapades.

”What do you know about this?” demanded Sammy's father. ”Here's his bag--filled with his possessions, by the feel of it. But where is the boy?”

”He--he's got away!” gasped Agnes.

”And we almost had him,” was Neale's addition to the amazed remarks of the trio of searchers.

CHAPTER XV--UNCERTAINTIES

The secret had now been revealed! But of course it did not do Sammy Pinkney the least bit of good. His extension-bag had not been stolen at all.

Merely, when that sleepy boy had stumbled away the night before to the spring for a drink of water, he had not returned to the right tree for the remainder of the night. In his excitement in the morning, after discovering his loss, Sammy ran about a good deal (as Uncle Rufus would have said) ”like a chicken wid de haid cut off.” He did not manage to find the right tree at all.

The extension-bag was now in his father's hands. Mr. Pinkney brought it to the mired car and opened it. There was no mistaking the contents of the bag for anything but Sammy's possessions.

”What do you know about that?” murmured the amazed father of the embryo pirate. He rummaged through the conglomeration of chattels in the bag. ”No, it is not here.”

”What are you looking for, Mr. Pinkney?” demanded Agnes, feeling rather serious herself. Something might have happened to the truant.

”That picture his mother spoke of,” the father answered, with a sigh.

”Hoh!” exclaimed Neale O'Neil, ”if the kid thinks as much of it as Mrs. Pinkney says, he's got it with him. Of course.”

”It looks so,” admitted Mr. Pinkney. ”But why should he abandon his clothes--and all?”