ut to call
when he saw the old man straining upon the lower rungs of the ladder
to reach the loft to pitch down a bunch of fodder. Queenie whinnied
softly.

"Hello, Cap'n Ira!" Tunis hailed. "What are you doing that for?" He
hastened to cross the barn floor to his aid. "Where's Ida May that
she lets you do this?"

"Ida May?" The old man repeated the name with such disgust that
Tunis was all but stunned and stopped to eye Cap'n Ira amazedly.
"D'ye think she'd take a step to save me a dozen? Or lift them
lily-white hands of hers to keep Prudence from doing all the work
she has to do? I swan!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Tunis. "You sound mighty funny, Cap'n
Ira. Hasn't Ida May been doing all and sundry for you for months? Is
she sick?"

"I--I don't mean _that_ gal," quavered Cap'n Ira. "I mean the real
Ida May."

He half tumbled off the ladder into Tunis Latham's arms. He clung to
the young man tightly, and, although it was dark in the barn, Tunis
could have sworn that there were tears on the old man's cheeks.

"Don't you know we've got the right Ida May with us at
last--Prudence's niece that has come here to visit for a while and
play lady? Yes, you was fooled; we was bamboozled. That--that other
gal, Tunis, is a real bad one, I ain't no doubt. She pulled the wool
over your eyes and made a monkey of most everybody, it seems. She--"

"Who are you talking about?" cried Tunis, in his alarm almost
shaking the old man.

"I'm telling you the girl you brought down here, thinking she was
Ida May Bostwick, turned out to be somebody else. I don't know who.
Anyway, she ain't no relation of Prudence or me. I ain't blaming you
none, boy; she told us we musn't blame you, for you didn't know the
truth about her, either."

"Cap'n Ira, where is she?" demanded the younger man hoarsely.

"She ain't here. She's gone. She left four nights ago--after Ida May
had remembered what she'd done in that big store in Boston. Oh, she
admitted it--"

"You mean to tell me she's gone? That you don't know where she is?"
almost shouted Tunis.

"Easy, boy! Remember I got some feeling yet in them arms you was
squeezing. It ain't our fault she went. She left us in the
night--stole out with just a bundle of clothes and things. Left,
Prudence says, every enduring thing she'd got since she come
here--that we give her."

Tunis groaned.

"Yes, she's gone. And she's left that other dratted girl in her
place. I swan, Tunis, I'd just as leave