CHAPTER IX.

THE RIFT IN THE CLOUD.

When Hugh heard this he knew he had a pretty difficult proposition on his hands. There was Andy cowering at his feet, and beseeching him to save him. Close by stood an excited little man who was evidently very angry besides, and in a frame of mind to prefer charges against the accused lad. The crowd that gathered around did not look any too friendly, for a thief is held in low esteem in a country town.

First of all, Hugh knew that it was his duty to stand up for a fellow scout as long as his guilt had not been proved. There were always chances for mistakes being made; and Andy was denying it so frantically that he could not believe the boy guilty of degrading his uniform by stealing.

“He’s telling you a downright lie!” cried the little man shaking his finger threateningly at the boy. “He was right at my heels when I discovered that someone had taken my pocketbook. When I accused him of it he looked frightened and tried to run. I tell you he is the culprit, and I want him arrested.”

“Take things a little more coolly, sir,” advised Hugh. “Nothing is to be gained by being excited. The boy isn’t going to run away. It’s a serious thing to make such an accusation without being sure of what you say. Did you have much money in your pocketbook?”

“All of three hundred dollars, in new bills I just got from the bank,” said the man. “I’m in the chicken business, and meant to buy some fancy blue-ribbon stock while at the Fair. But I was wise enough to mark every one of those ten-dollar bills with a couple of little red crosses. I’d know them again if I saw them.”

“Good for you, Hennery Cooper!” called out someone in the crowd. “That was what I’d call a smart dodge. Your chickens will come home to roost yet!”

“Andy, what have you got to say about this accusation?” asked Hugh, as he helped to bring the trembling and white-faced boy to his feet again.

“All I can say, Hugh,” the other replied, with quivering lip, “is that I never did such a thing. Why, I wouldn’t take his pocketbook for anything. I know I’ve got a bad reputation to live down, but I’ve been trying hard to do it. He just turned on me, and accused me. It scared me, and I tried to run before I even thought how bad that would look. But, Hugh, I give you my word as a scout that I’m innocent. You believe me, don’t you, Hugh?”

Hugh still faced the angry man who claimed to have been robbed.

“So far as I can see, sir,” he told him, “you’ve only accused this boy on general principles. Because he looked frightened when you told him so, and tried to run, you say he is guilty. Now you will have to show better evidence than that in court. Did you see him take your property?”

“Well, er, no, I don’t say that exactly; but I’m sure he did!” replied the man.

“There are a good many persons who, if suddenly accused, would be so alarmed that they might lose their heads and run away. Listen to what I’m going to propose to you, Mr. Cooper, if that’s your name.”

“All right, go ahead, then,” said the other, turning to nod to the crowd as if he wanted to be sure of keeping this backing.

“If he took your pocketbook,” continued the scout master, “and you discovered your loss so quickly that he had not left your side, the chances are he’d have it on his person, don’t you think?”

“Seems like it,” assented the other, cautiously.

“Well, would you be satisfied to have his pockets searched by some person present who would act fair and square to both parties?”

“That sounds all right, Hennery!” called out someone.

“You’ve got to take him up on that offer, Cooper!” said another.

“Get Major Anson here to do the searching; we all know him like a book!” a third man advised.

“Oh, I’m agreeable!” admitted the loser of the missing property.

Hugh turned to Andy.

“Are you willing to let Major Anson look through your pockets, Andy?” he asked.

“Sure I am, Hugh, and I’ll be only to glad of it, because I know right well he won’t find anything on me. I’d be a fool to do such a mean thing when I’m wearing a scout’s uniform. I’d jump in Rainbow Lake first. Do you think I’ve forgotten that my dad told me if I ever went back to my old ways again he’d kick me out of the house? Let him search me and welcome!”

Major Anson was a veteran of the Civil War. He delighted to wear his beloved blue uniform, and his slouch hat with its gold-threaded cord. Everybody knew him, and had the greatest respect for his honesty. He now stepped forward, for like most men the old fellow liked to find himself in the limelight once in a while.

Andy raised both arms as though wishing to make the searching operation as easy for the veteran as he could. Hugh noticed that in place of the frightened expression on his face there was now a little smile of utmost confidence.

“He is surely innocent!” Hugh was saying to himself as he saw this.

The pressing crowd gaped and watched. Perhaps some of them, remembering that in the past this same Andy Wallis has not enjoyed a very good reputation, may have indulged in the expectation that the boy might not be so innocent as he claimed.

All at once Major Anson held something up which he had just taken from one of the scout’s outer coat pockets. Hugh gave a gasp of dismay, for he saw that it was a pocketbook!

“Is this your property, sir?” demanded the veteran.

“What did I tell you?” almost shouted the little man, as he snatched the article from the other. “It’s my pocketbook as sure as anything; but see here, it doesn’t hold a single one of those thirty ten-dollar bills I told you about!”

A silence fell upon the crowd. Every eye seemed to be focussed upon the face of the wretched Andy, again white as chalk. He was staring hard at the pocketbook as though it might be an accusing finger pointed straight at him.

“I never took it!” Andy cried, almost choking with emotion. “I say I never saw it before this minute. Somebody must have put it in my pocket if you found it there. Oh, Hugh, don’t turn your head away from me; you’re all I’ve got to back me up! _You_ believe me, say you do, won’t you?”

Hugh would have given a great deal to have felt absolutely sure concerning the boy’s innocence. The evidence seemed so strong, added to the past reputation of Andy, that he had to grit his teeth and with a great effort make up his mind to do all he could to solve the puzzle.

“Keep on searching, Major Anson, please,” he told the veteran. “You’ve found the husk, but without the kernel. See if you can discover a single one of those marked ten-dollar bills on the boy!”

Again did Andy allow his person to be gone over, though he was so weak from fear that he would have fallen had not Hugh put an arm about his shoulders. It was the contact with the scout master that held Andy up in that minute of anguish. In such a time the personal touch of a friend’s hand is worth more than can be reckoned in money; for it gives confidence, and announces that not quite all the world has turned against the unfortunate one.

Old Major Anson did his part of the business thoroughly. He examined every pocket, and even ran his hand over the lining of the boy’s khaki coat as though he suspected some secret hiding-place.

When he had completed his task the veteran nodded to Hugh, and made a salute as one officer might to another.

“There is nothing in the way of money on his person, sir,” he reported.

The crowd had waited eagerly, and seemed to anticipate further thrilling disclosures. To most of those who looked on, it was pretty much in the way of a source of amusement; some of them were hoping the wad of stolen bills would be found. It mattered little to them that a boy’s heart was perilously near the breaking point; he was only a boy, and they also remembered that he had once been a rogue under the tutelage of Lige Corbley.

“But don’t you see,” said the owner of the empty pocketbook, “he must have handed the money over to a confederate. These slick rascals always hunt in pairs, I’m told. Just as soon as he got my property he slipped the bills out and passed them onto some one who walked away while we were making all that row.”

“Sounds kind of reasonable to me!” said one man, frowning at the shivering Andy, against whom he may have had a spite of long standing.

“Look up at me, Andy!” said Hugh, sternly, and the boy obeyed quickly, with an expression on his pallid face that Hugh somehow could only compare to the look of a hunted deer that finds its escape cut off, and the savage wolves closing in on all sides.

“What is it, Hugh?” he asked, piteously, wringing his hands as he spoke.

“You still tell me on your word of honor as a scout that you never touched that pocketbook, and never saw it before, do you?”

“I’ll keep on saying it as long as I have a breath in my body!” cried the boy. “If they torture me I’ll never change my mind, because I didn’t take it! I want you to believe I’m trying to live up to a scout’s vows, Hugh, sure I am!”

“Well,” said Hugh, firmly, “I do believe you, Andy. I’m going to stand by you through thick and thin, at least until they can show more proof than just the finding of an empty pocketbook in your coat would seem to be. The thief might have slipped it in _my_ pocket just as easily; but that’s no reason people should say _I_ stole it.”

“Everybody knows and trusts you, Hugh,” called out a man; “it’s different with him!”

“Yes,” Hugh instantly told him, with flashing eyes, “it is different with him, for he’s got a past to live down, and I honestly believe he’s doing it right well. For shame, that you’d be all the more ready to believe him guilty than any other boy. I’ve taken the trouble to test him more than once, and he proved faithful to his trust. We’re bound to believe him innocent until he’s absolutely proved guilty.”

Andy’s hand closed convulsively on Hugh’s arm when he heard him say that. No matter what might come to him in after life he would never forget how the scout master stood back of him in this, his hour of peril.

“Here comes the Chief,” said a man; “and he’s the boy’s uncle, too!”

“All the same he’s got to take him in if I prefer a charge against him, I want you to know!” cried the robbed poultry dealer, angrily. “He won’t get off easy because his uncle happens to be at the head of the Oakvale police force.”

“No danger of the Chief not doing his duty,” he was informed; “he knows his play, and if it was his own boy he’d run him in without a word.”

“And I happen to know the Chief used to be mighty sore about this nephew of his when the boy was running with that Corbley gang, and painting the town red,” another man sang out.

Hugh was in a quandary. If the little man insisted, the arrest must be made. Aside from the inconvenience it might cause poor Andy there was the disgrace attached to having a boy dressed in the khaki of a scout taken up on the Fair grounds on the charge of being a thief!

“Hugh,” said the boy, trying to brace up, “no matter what they say or do I want you to know I’m innocent, and that I’d sooner cut my hand off than do such a thing after I’ve been getting on so finely. That’s all I can say,” and he heaved a mighty sigh as though resigning himself to the inevitable.

They tell us that it is always darkest just before dawn, and Hugh had cause to remember this later on. He thought he was feeling about as badly as any one could, and hardly knew which way to turn as the pompous-looking Chief of Police could be seen hurrying toward the spot.

Just then a hearty voice rang out, and somehow it seemed to instantly give Hugh a feeling of greatest relief, even before he caught the tenor of what was said.

“I’ve kept quiet long enough,” said this party. “I wanted to see just how far this thing would go. That boy is innocent, because I saw the man drop that pocketbook in his coat. You know me, I guess. Jones is my name, and it’s never been questioned.”