“Yes, because we haven’t lost anything through you as far as we can find out,” the scout leader told him, at which Jared’s face lost some of its strained look, and Andy thought he caught some of the old-time crafty gleam in his shifting eyes.
“I give you my word for it, Rob, I never took a single living thing,” he hastened to say.
“Well, we’ll make sure of that by taking a look through your pockets!” declared Rob, sternly. “You don’t seem to like that, do you? But make up your mind that if you start to show the first sign of resistance we’ll not only pile on you, but hand you over to the police afterward without listening to any more promises. Andy, you tap his pockets, and see what he’s got.”
Andy did not hesitate an instant; indeed, to see the way he started in one might believe this was an avocation with the scout, and that he had been employed a long time at police headquarters searching the pockets of prisoners before they were thrust into cells.
A number of things were brought to light, which did not possess any particular interest for the scouts. When, however, from an inside pocket Andy drew a roll of bills, fastened with a rubber band, Tubby was heard to give a “whee!” and Hiram nudged Rob in the side as if to say: “See how he yarned when he vowed he wanted to get back on the farm, but didn’t have the railroad fare East!”
Andy deliberately proceeded to count the contents of the roll, while the wretched owner followed his every move, as though he feared that by some hocus-pocus or sleight of hand process, with which he himself was possibly familiar, some of the money might take wings and fly away.
“Just ninety-seven dollars here, Rob!” announced Andy.
“Yes, that’s right,” declared Jared, cringing before Rob’s look, “and I earned every cent of that roll by honest days’ labor, every cent of it. I thought I needed just a little more to see me through all the way East. I was told it’d take about—say a hundred and ten clear. But I c’n wait now till I get my next wages. I was a silly fool to think to rob my old pals of the days in Hampton.”
“You never said truer words than those, Jared,” Rob told him, plainly, but with a feeling that nothing the other declared would be believed under oath, for truth and Jared Applegate had never been friends.