The cleared space was there to show where something had been cultivated;
the bare earth was raked level. Not so much as the hole from which my
beet had been ravished remained in circumstantial evidence. The rest of
the party arrived while I stood transfixed, the picture of detected
guilt. To the rustle of the corn, and the shuffle of feet over the
furrows succeeded a horrible hush. Then, a chorus of mocking girlish
cackles, led by Paulina Hobson's discordant screech, smote the sunset
air and covered me with a pall of infamy. Paulina caught at the fence
for support as she laughed; Madeline bent double and reeled sideways.

I clutched my father's hand, drowning and suffocating in the waves of
despairing agony; I shook my tight fist at the insulting quartette.

"They--_they_--took it! It was here this morning. It was here just after
dinner to-day!"

"Be quiet, girls!" ordered my judge-advocate. "Molly! I want the exact
truth. If you accuse them, you must prove what you say. Things have gone
too far to stop here. Didn't you say that Spotswoode knew something
about the affair?"

"He knows all about it. He helped me, ever so many times, and he saw how
big it was," I ejaculated vehemently.

"We shall probably find him at the stables, feeding the horses."

Back we trudged by my air-line, well-worn but narrow. I fancy that my
father took note of my familiarity with the path, but he did not speak
of it. I marched in front of him, gloomy and desperate. Some of the
others talked low as they straggled along. The girls kept up a hissing
whispering, for which I hated them with my whole soul. I think that my
mother and Miss Davidson shed some furtive tears, for my case was black,
and they were tender-hearted.

Spotswoode was looking after his plough-horses, as my father had
conjectured. At his master's shout, he emerged from the stalls and
presented himself in the stable door. Ungainly, dirty, bare-footed, his
ragged wool hat on the back of his unkempt woolly poll, his jaw dropping
in idiotic amazement at sight of the party--he was a ludicrous figure in
the bath of late sunshine that brought out every uncomely item of the
picture. Preoccupied and distraught as I was, I saw how the dust from
the stable floor floated in golden clouds to the cobwebbed rafters, as
the sun struck past the man in the doorway and glorified the murky
interior.

I rushed through the yard, heedless of manure heaps, and young pigs and
calves scattered by