to consideration the fact that you have
no experience outside of school. Is this the place? What a funny
looking court! Does he live here, too? The justice of peace, I mean."

"Why, Tabitha!" interrupted Irene, clutching the older girl by the arm.
"Look there! That's our candy man,--the tallest one--and they've got
him hand-cuffed. Does-- Is _he_ the man they say robbed the bank? I
don't believe he ever did it!"

"Hush!" warned Inez, giving her twin a vicious dig in the ribs. But
the damage was already done.

"What do you mean?" demanded Tabitha, pausing on the threshold of the
tiny, dirty room that served as courthouse for the town of Silver Bow.

"Yes, what do you mean?" asked one of the lawyers, who had chanced to
overhear the remark.

"He made candy for us the day you went to the river and left us at
home," explained Irene, ignoring the frowns of her partners in guilt.

"Tell us all about it."

Bit by bit the story came out, and to Irene's great grief it forged
another link in the chain of evidence already so strong against the
cheery stranger. "I don't want him to go to jail," she sobbed. "He's
an awfully nice man."

"But, dear, he is a thief," Tabitha told her. "He ought to go to jail."

"If they'd only let him loose this time, I'm sure he would never steal
again," the child staunchly maintained. But in spite of her faith in
him, the "candy man," as the children continued to call him, was sent
to the county seat for trial, convicted, and sentenced to a long term
in prison.

"He shouldn't have stolen if he didn't want to go to prison," asserted
Billiard virtuously. "If he hadn't robbed the bank, he never would
have had to hide in the haunted house and we wouldn't have found them
there."

"But as 'tis," added Toady, "they paid Billiard and me each fifty
dollars for finding them. I mean the town paid us."

"Though you didn't discover whether there are any ghosts or not," said
Susie much disappointed.

"Who cares?" retorted the boys, drawing out their little hoard of gold
pieces and gloating over them. "I wish there were more haunted houses
if they'd all pay us as well as this one did. Now, what shall we do
with our money?"

CHAPTER XIV

THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

"Only two weeks more of vacation," sighed Tabitha, sinking wearily into
the hammock one August afternoon, and looking longingly away to the
west where the train was just puffing into view. "I never dreamed we
should