eldom see the usual tramp around here," said Ruth, shaking her head.
"We are too far off the railroad line. And the Cheslow constables keep
them moving if they land _there_."

"Could anybody have done it for a joke?" asked Tom suddenly.

"If they have," Ruth said, wiping her eyes, "it is the least like a joke
of anything that ever happened to me. Why, Tom! I couldn't lay out that
scenario again, and think of all the details, and get it just so, in a
year!"

"Oh, Ruth!"

"I mean it! And even my notes are gone. Oh, dear! I'd never have the heart
to write that scenario again. I don't know that I shall ever write
another, anyway. I'm discouraged," sobbed the girl suddenly.

"Oh, Ruth! don't give way like this," he urged, with rather a boyish fear
of a girl's tears.

"I've given way already," she choked. "I just feel that I'll never be able
to put that scenario into shape again. And I'd written Mr. Hammond so
enthusiastically about it."

"Oh! Then he knows all about it!" said Tom. "That is more than any of us
do. You wouldn't tell us a thing."

"And I didn't tell him. He doesn't know the subject, or the title, or
anything about it. I tell you, Tom, I had _such_ a good idea----"

"And you've got the idea yet, haven't you? Cheer up! Of course you can do
it over."

"Suppose," demanded Ruth quickly, "this thief that has got my manuscript
should offer it to some producer? Why! if I tried to rewrite it and bring
it out, I might be accused of plagiarizing my own work."

"Jimminy!"

"I wouldn't dare," said Ruth, shaking her head. "As long as I do not know
what has become of the scenario and my notes, I will not dare use the idea
at all. It is dreadful!"

The rain was now falling less torrentially. The tempest was passing. Soon
there was even a rift in the clouds in the northwest where a patch of blue
sky shone through "big enough to make a Scotchman a pair of breeches," as
Aunt Alvirah would say.

"We'd better go up to the house," sighed Ruth.

"I'll go right around to the neighbors and see if anybody has noticed a
stranger in the vicinity," Tom suggested.

"There's Ben! Do you suppose he has seen anybody?"

A lanky young man, his clothing gray with flour dust, came from the back
door of the mill and hastened under the dripping trees to reach the porch
of the farmhouse. He stood there, smiling broadly at them, as Ruth and Tom
hurriedly crossed the yard.

"Good day, Mr. Tom," said Ben, the miller's helper. Then