"Why, Uncle Shad!" exclaimed the girl. "Aren't you going to stop?"

"Eh? Stop? What for?"

"Why, to see Uncle Zoeth, of course. He's at the store, isn't he?"

Shadrach shook his head.

"No, he ain't," he said. "He's to home."

Mary was amazed and a trifle alarmed. One partner of Hamilton and
Company was there in the buggy with her. By all the rules of precedent
and South Harniss business the other should have been at the store. She
knew that her uncles had employed no clerk or assistant since she left.

"But--but is Uncle Zoeth sick?" she asked.

"Sick? No, no, course he ain't sick. If he didn't have no better sense
than to get sick the day you come home I'd--I'd--I don't know's
I wouldn't drown him. HE ain't sick--unless," he added, as an
afterthought, "he's got Saint Vitus dance from hoppin' up and down to
look out of the window, watchin' for us."

"But if he isn't sick, why isn't he at the store? Who is there?"

The Captain chuckled.

"Not a solitary soul," he declared. "That store's shut up tight and
it's goin' to stay that way this whole blessed evenin'. Zoeth and me
we talked it over. I didn't know but we'd better get Abel Snow's boy or