father lost all his money and Hal wanted to see if you'd give
him more," suggested Jan.

"Or maybe he wanted to get work in your store," added Ted.

"I hardly think so," remarked his father. "It is queer, though, why the
boy should go away without seeing me, whoever he was. I'm sorry about
the missing pocketbook. I know Hal would never do such a thing as that.
Well, it can't be helped."

"Shall I call the police?" asked the clerk.

"What for?" Mr. Martin queried.

"So they can look for this lame boy, whoever he was, and arrest him for
taking that money."

"Maybe he didn't take it," said Mr. Martin.

"He must have," declared the clerk. "The pocketbook was right on the
bench near him, and after he went away the pocketbook wasn't there any
more. He took it all right!"

"Well, never mind about the police for a while," said the children's
father. "Maybe the lame boy will come back and tell us what he wanted to
see me about, and maybe he only took the pocketbook by mistake. Or some
one else may have walked off with it. Don't call the police yet."

"I'm glad daddy didn't call the police," said Ted to Jan, as they went
home a little later, carrying their fine, new, rubber boots.

"So'm I," agreed his sister. "Even if it was Hal I don't believe he took
the money."

"No, course not! Hal wouldn't do that. Anyhow Hal wasn't hardly lame at
all any more. The doctors at the Home cured him," said Ted.

"Unless maybe he got lame again in the snow," suggested Janet.

"Well, of course he might have slipped down and hurt his foot," admitted
Ted. "But anyhow I guess it wasn't Hal."

Neither of the Curlytops liked to think that their former playmate would
do such a thing as to take a pocketbook that did not belong to him.
Mother Martin, when told what had happened at the store that day, said
she was sure it could not be Hal.

"There's one way you can find out," she said to her husband. "Write to
Hal's father and ask him if he has been away from home."

"I'll do it!" agreed Mr. Martin, while Ted and Jan were out in the snow,
wading in the biggest drifts they could find with their high rubber
boots on. Their feet did not get a bit wet.

In a few days Mr. Martin had an answer from the letter he had sent to
Mr. Chester, Hal's father. The letter was written by a friend of Mr.
Chester's who was in charge of his home and who opened all the mail. Mr.
Chester, this man wrote, was traveling with his wife and Hal, and no one
knew