“True,” Peter acknowledged. “Tell you what I’ll do, Angel. I’ll take this picture to the office tomorrow and have it blown up and separated. Then we’ll take a little ride out to the beaver dam—”
“You and me?” exclaimed Judy, delighted.
“I certainly wouldn’t take any other girl,” Peter replied to tease her. “Old Blackberry can come along, too. He looks as if you’d hurt his feelings.”
Judy giggled. “I used the vacuum cleaner.”
“Good! Then you won’t have any housework to do tomorrow, and we can get an early start. Bring that camera of yours along,” Peter added, his blue eyes twinkling. “Maybe this time you can photograph beavers instead of ghosts.”
Judy and Peter set out early the next morning to take the “ghost picture,” as they both called it, to Farringdon and leave it for the experts to figure out. Judy kept the original print. New prints would be made from the film. They would be flashed on a screen both before and after being separated. Peter would see them, but Judy knew she would not be included in the secret work of identifying the unknown man. It was enough to be included in Peter’s plans for the day.
“Officially, we’re supposed to question Danny. We’ll stop at the orphanage first and then drive on to the beaver dam.” Peter began making plans. “Meantime the experts will be unscrambling that picture—”
“And I’ll be taking a few more,” Judy broke in. “This time I intend to see what I’m taking.”
It was a bright, sunny day. The ride out of Dry Brook Hollow over the hills and down again into Farringdon was pleasant and uneventful. The little city hadn’t changed the way Roulsville had. There was a new high school because the old one had burned, and a new post office simply because it was needed. The library was the same red brick building Judy had learned to love when she went to the old high school in Farringdon. It didn’t have any glass cases for displays—just rows and rows of books. Judy stopped in to browse among them while Peter took the film of the “ghost picture” to the FBI Resident Agency across the street.
“Hi, Judy! This is like old times,” someone greeted her as she walked between the rows of books.
It was Lois Farringdon-Pett but, instead of being with Lorraine as she always used to be, her new friend Donna Truitt was with her.
“We’re looking for decorating ideas,” Lois confided. “Donna’s family’s bought one of those Victorian houses on Grove Street, and it has to be furnished with period pieces.”
“Oh, we have things, but not therightthings,” Donna put in. “We’ve moved around too much. My father’s business keeps him on the move, but he says this time we’re in Farringdon to stay.”
“You lived here before, didn’t you?” Judy questioned. “Where Mr. Sammis’ antique shop is now?”
She knew the answer. But Donna wouldn’t admit that she had ever lived in the poorer section of North Farringdon or that Mr. Sammis had bought what used to be the Truitt house.
“We lived in Ulysses before we moved here,” she insisted. “Of course, I know the shop you mean. I stopped there to look at some of his antiques.”
“He has some nice things,” Judy admitted, “but his shop is so crowded it’s hard to find them. Some of his furniture has been broken and then mended, and some of it is warped. I don’t think any of it would be right for one of those Grove Street houses.”
“He has other stuff, Judy,” Lois told her. “That shop you visited isn’t his only place of business.”
“Do you know where his other shops are?” Judy questioned.
Lois shook her head. Donna claimed not to know either, but, from the way she pulled Lois away, Judy felt she was avoiding further questions. When Judy was in the car again she mentioned it to Peter.
“Donna Truitt won’t avoid the questions Hank Lawson asks her on their date tonight,” declared Peter. “He’s going to question Sammis, too. It’s better if he doesn’t suspect you have any interest in anything he has to sell, or in any of his other shops. We’ll find them without arousing his suspicions.”
Judy understood what Peter meant. They passed the sheared-off house without slowing down, Judy in the front seat beside Peter and Blackberry in his usual place next to the back window. The cat seemed to be enjoying the scenery as, one after another, the small towns along the way were reached and passed.
At the watershed Peter stopped long enough to point out the far-off river valleys that lost themselves among the blue hills.
“Back there,” he said, indicating a wooded slope beyond the little town named Gold, “is the head of the Allegheny. If we took that road to the right we’d cross a branch of the Susquehanna, and just ahead, before we get to the orphanage, is a bridge over the Genessee. Confusing, isn’t it?”
“Wonderful is the word,” declared Judy. “I mean that three great river systems originate within a few miles of each other right here in our own Pennsylvania hills.”
She knew that the furniture the beavers had built into their dam couldn’t have floated upstream and been transported overland by beavers. People must have transported it before the beavers found it.
“But where was it all this time?” Judy wondered.
“We’ll find out,” Peter promised after talking over Judy’s theory. “It must have been stored or dumped somewhere near the beaver dam.”
“Maybe Danny will know,” Judy suggested.
“What Danny knows and what he’s willing to tell are two different stories,” declared Peter. “He may be playing detective himself. On the other hand, he may be trying to protect someone—”
“His father?” Judy questioned. “At first I thought that might be his father in the picture.”
“It might be.” Peter planned to question Danny about it, but when they stopped at the orphanage they were told that the boy was off again on one of his expeditions.
“He never tells me where he’s going, but he knows that I know he always goes to the beaver dam,” the matron confided.
“Are you sure?” asked Judy. “If he used to live in that house with the boarded-up windows he might go there.”
Meta Hanley shook her head. “I don’t think so. The house is locked. Danny told me himself that he wished he could get in. All the Andersons’ things are stored there. George Anderson is supposed to return and make a home for Danny, but he never comes.”
“Do you know why?” asked Peter.
“He’s working. Danny showed me a letter from him,” one of the orphans spoke up. There were always little groups of them standing around, listening.
“It had a Canadian stamp on it,” another orphan volunteered.
“Yes,” the matron agreed. “Danny’s father is working in Canada. He writes to him regularly, but Danny never shows me the letters. A ten-year-old has a right to some privacy. His mother, as you know, is dead.”
“We know.” Judy agreed with Meta Hanley about Danny’s right to privacy, and yet she felt sure the matron must be curious.
“You’ll have to ask Danny,” was all she could say.
Judy couldn’t help wondering how Miss Hanley really felt about Danny’s father. Afterwards, in the car, Judy and Peter talked over the old romance. Could something unexpected have happened to prevent George Anderson from keeping his appointment at the beaver dam?
“Meta told me she expected him to bring her wedding ring. He never brought it,” declared Judy, “and only a few months afterwards she read in the paper that he was married to the girl who became Danny’s mother. They lived in the house she had thought would be hers. There it is!” she broke off to exclaim as the house with the boarded-up windows came in sight. “Doesn’t it look lonely?”
Peter stopped the car. “Lonely, perhaps, but not deserted. You can see where a truck has been driven into the garage just recently. For all I know, it’s still there.”
“Let’s explore the place and find out!” Judy said eagerly.
Blackberry seemed eager to do some exploring, too. Before Judy could stop him, the cat was out of the car and off in the direction of the mysterious house. In a moment, he had disappeared.
“Here, kitty! Kitty! Kitty!” Peter called, but the cat did not reappear.
“He never comes unless he thinks you have food,” Judy reminded him. “Cats aren’t like dogs. They’re independent and adventurous, and I don’t blame Blackberry one bit. I wouldn’t come, either, if you called me away from a mystery, and I think he’s found one inside that house. How do you suppose he got in?”
“Let’s find out,” Peter suggested.
Judy followed him around to the back of the house where a sagging porch seemed to have been partly destroyed by beavers. Now she could hear Blackberry inside the house. Or was that Blackberry? If it was, he was playing with something that made a rolling sound along the floor.
“Maybe he’s found a spool. You’ll never get him out of there if he’s found something to play with,” Peter predicted.
“He had to get in there some way. If we can find an opening—”
Judy stopped with her sentence half finished because, in almost the same moment, she and Peter had found it. The back door was locked, but there beside it was a small hole gnawed by beavers. It was large enough for a cat or a beaver to squeeze through, but not for a person.
“It’s large enough for a table leg, too!” Judy exclaimed, bending to measure the space with her hand. “Peter,thismust be where the beavers found all that furniture they built into their dam, but what’s this?”
Reaching in a little farther, Judy’s fingers closed over the small, round object Blackberry had been rolling on the floor.
“What is it?” asked Peter as Judy held the object in her closed hand.
She smiled at him. “You’ll have to guess, but I’ll give you a hint. It’s something I don’t need. I already have one, and I love it dearly. You gave it to me.”
“I gave you Blackberry.”
“I know. This is the thing he was rolling around in there.”
“A spool of thread?”
“Oh, no! This is something much more exciting. I know a song about it. We have it on an old record.”
And Judy began to sing:
“Love’s not a sudden romanceOr the kiss that follows a dance.Love is forever, an everlasting thing.Love is....”
“Love’s not a sudden romance
Or the kiss that follows a dance.
Love is forever, an everlasting thing.
Love is....”
“A golden ring.” Peter finished the line as Judy opened her hand.
There it was—a plain band of gold. It was not engraved on the outside as Judy’s ring was. She had once told Peter that the leaves engraved on her wedding ring looked like littley’s. “They all stand foryou,” she had whispered after he had placed the ring on her finger.
This ring, Judy soon discovered, had never been placed on anyone’s finger. The engraving on the inside told the story.
“Peter! There are some initials there!” Judy exclaimed, noticing them first. “Can you see what they are?”
He held the ring in a better light.
“‘G. A. to M. H.,’” he read.
“But that’s George Anderson to Meta Hanley!” Judy exclaimed. “He did buy her the ring. He really did intend to marry her. But then I guess he met this other girl, and love didn’t turn out to be such an everlasting thing for him. Meta ought to know about the ring, though. Shall we take it to her?”
“Not so fast, Angel. That ring isn’t all we’ve discovered,” declared Peter. “Don’t you think, before we deliver the ring, we ought to find out what else is in this house and how it came to be here?”
“You mean—Oh dear!” Judy interrupted herself, knowing too well what Peter meant. “You mean Danny’s father may have been hiding all that loot from the Roulsville flood in his boarded-up house. If the beavers hadn’t broken in—Oh dear!” Judy said again. “I almost wish they hadn’t. It spoils that beautiful romance I was dreaming up for Meta Hanley. She won’t want to marry a thief. She won’t even want this ring.”
“She may. If she really loved him she may want to marry him, anyway, and Danny does need a mother—”
“But his father will be in jail!”
Peter laughed. “We have to find him before we can put him there, or marry him off, either. I think Danny knew the beavers were hauling stuff away from the house where he used to live.”
“Oh dear! Then he knew his father stole it?”
“Are all thoseoh dearsfor Danny? I feel sorry for the boy myself,” Peter admitted. “But perhaps his father allowed the stuff to be stored in his house without knowing it was stolen.”
“I doubt it. He can’t be much good,” declared Judy. “He did leave his boy at the orphanage.”
“Angel,” Peter replied in that calm voice he used when he was begging Judy to be reasonable, “you can’t blame him for that, can you? He may have known Meta Hanley was the matron and that she would be a second mother to Danny. He must be in these woods somewhere.”
They had been walking toward the beaver dam while they were talking. Judy glanced back along the road they had taken.
“Blackberry isn’t coming,” she observed. “I thought surely he’d follow us if we started walking.”
“He’s still exploring that house. We’ll stop and call him again on our way back to the car,” Peter promised. “Meanwhile we may surprise the beavers and get a few good pictures.”
Judy had her camera with her, but she had lost interest in the beavers. “We won’t find them gnawing down trees,” she said. “They find it easier to haul broken pieces of furniture through that hole they gnawed in the house. If Danny knows the furniture is there,” she went on thoughtfully, “then I’m sure he must know it’s stolen. Probably it’s being sold, little by little, by unscrupulous men like Mr. Sammis. It’s funny, though, Sammis did tell that truck driver to take the furniture back.”
“What furniture?” asked Peter, suddenly interested.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’m not sure it was furniture, but just as we were leaving that second-hand shop a truck drove up. It had the nameJOHN BEERlettered on it.”
“Did you see the license plates?”
“Yes, they were New York plates,” Judy replied. “John Beer was trying to sell Sammis some furniture. I thought at first it might be display cases or something he’d made, because it said on the truck that he was a carpenter. But now I remember hearing him say, ‘This is good furniture. I’ve sanded and refinished everything—’”
“And the truck came from New York State?”
“It must have.” Judy began to see the importance of what she had just told Peter. If stolen goods had been transported across state lines it would be his duty, not only to report it, but to act upon his report.
“I’ll drive to the nearest telephone and be right back,” he promised. “You wait for me at the beaver dam. If you see Danny maybe you can get him to talk. Keep this picture and show it to him.”
“The ‘ghost picture’!” Judy exclaimed as Peter handed it to her. “What do you want me to do, scare him to death?”
Peter laughed. “It may give him a jolt. But you can explain the lady’s face—”
“A lot easier than I can explain some other things,” Judy finished.
She didn’t think of the woods as being lonely until Peter was gone. The beaver dam, robbed of its lady, was nothing but a mass of mud and sticks. Ripples on the surface of the pond told her the beavers were there. They hadn’t dragged out any more furniture to repair their dam. They had moved a stone. Or had someone moved it for them?
Suddenly Judy became uneasy. She had been keeping perfectly still with her camera focused on the pond. Now she whirled around with it as something moved in the bushes behind her.
“It’s only a beaver,” she said to herself, relief flooding over her. She had imagined the man in the “ghost picture” stealing stealthily through the woods. But that was silly. Peter wouldn’t have left her if there had been any danger. Without moving from where she stood, she began to take pictures.
Soon two more beavers appeared carrying poles. A crash in the woods off to her right told her that another sapling had fallen. If beavers worked only at night, these animals were breaking the rules. Judy watched them for half an hour and then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the beavers vanished. Something had startled them. Was it Blackberry?
“Here, kitty! Kitty! Kitty!” Judy began to call.
“Quiet!” a voice hissed from the tree overhead.
Judy looked up to see Danny looking more like a wood sprite than ever in his green jacket. His eyes pierced through her as if they were accusing her of invading his private world.
“I was only calling my cat,” she started to explain.
“He won’t come.” Danny declared.
“Why not?” Judy wanted to know.
“Because I trapped him. That’s why. I’ll trap anything or anybody who goes in that house without my father’s permission,” declared Danny. “I plugged up the hole and trapped him. That’s what I did.”
“That’s cruel!” cried Judy. “He’s only a cat. I’m going right back there this minute and let him out.”
“No, you’re not!” Danny sprang down from the tree and seized her arm, but not before she found the “ghost picture” and held it before his face. She didn’t care if she did give him a jolt. All her sympathy on him had been wasted.
“He’s a vicious little monster,” she thought. “He deserves to be frightened.”
She was not prepared for the quick change of expression or the sudden loosening of his grasp on her arm. He snatched the picture and held it in a patch of sunlight.
“You got him!” he exclaimed. “Or is it a her? You got that man I was following, and he has a lady’s face.”
“Don’t you recognize the face?” Judy asked quietly.
“It’s the face that was on that lady stick. Somebody did steal it,” the boy charged. “If you and your brother hadn’t taken me back to the orphanage I could have watched the beaver dam. Then it wouldn’t have been broken.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Judy said, meaning it. “You know my brother didn’t take it.”
“Then who did?” Danny retorted.
“Don’t you know?”
The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it was that guy in the picture. I’m going to tell my father—”
“Look closely, Danny,” Judy interrupted. “I took one picture on top of another. Isn’t that your father in the second picture?”
“My father?” Danny repeated with a dazed expression on his face. “You mean that man I’ve been following is my father?”
“I’m askingyou,” Judy said, torn between sympathy and anger. Her arm was beginning to turn black and blue where the boy had held it. “You must know who was with you that night you stayed at the beaver dam. Or didn’t you stay there?”
“Not all the time,” Danny confessed. “Some of the time I was watching the house. That man has a key. He goes in and out whenever he pleases, but if heismy father it’s all right, isn’t it?”
What could Judy say? It was all wrong whoever the man was. Danny seemed to sense it.
“But my father would come and see me,” he objected to his own reasoning. “And how can he send me letters from Canada if he’s right here?”
“Are all his letters from Canada?” asked Judy.
Danny had started walking back toward the house that used to be his home. Judy followed him. He walked a little way before he answered. “All but the last one. That was just a note. It didn’t have any stamp on it.”
“How could it go through the mail without a stamp?” Judy wondered.
Danny looked back at her. “Are you following me just to ask questions?” he demanded.
“I’m going to let my cat out. You said you shut him in the house. But I would like an answer to my question.”
“About the letter, you mean? I guess it could have been inside another letter, couldn’t it? Maybe my father wrote to tell Ma he was coming. We always call the matron Ma,” Danny explained. “All the orphans do except the new ones. Some of them won’t talk at all.”
“I guess they’re afraid—”
“Sure,” Danny interrupted. “I was, too. I was only four years old when my mother died and my father took me away in his car. He only took me as far as the orphanage. Then he said, ‘Get out!’ in a sort of funny voice. ‘Go on up to the door,’ he told me. So I did. By the time Ma opened it my father was gone.”
“And that was the last time you saw him?” Judy asked in surprise.
Danny nodded. He and Judy were walking together now. Through the trees, they could see the house with the boarded-up windows.
“The windows weren’t like that when we lived there,” Danny went on talking. “You could see out, and people on the outside could see in. It will be like that again when my father comes home. I don’t remember him very well, but I do know he promised to come back when I was ten. He keeps reminding me of it in his letters. He said by then he’d have a lot of money—”
“He didn’t say where he’d get it, did he?” Judy interrupted to ask.
Danny’s eyes blazed at her. “He’d work for it, of course. Where else would he get it?”
Judy was getting in deeper and deeper. She wished Peter would come back. He would know what questions to ask and how to answer those that the boy fired at her.
“He said,” Danny continued, eager to talk about it now, “that he’d work hard and save money and when I was ten years old we’d go back to the old house, and everything would be the way it was when Mother was alive. But it isn’t! The things in the house are all different.”
“How do you know that?” asked Judy. “I mean, how can you tell when you can’t get in?”
“Because those things the beavers dragged out aren’t our things. Anyway, I don’tthinkthey are. You said that lady stick was a leg from your table.”
“I thought it was,” Judy replied quietly.
“But you aren’t sure?”
“Oh, Danny! I don’t know. I’m just as puzzled as you are,” Judy told him. “Can’t we be friends? Can’t we work out this puzzle together?”
“Not if it’s going to get my father in trouble.”
He stopped abruptly. Peter was coming toward them.
“Somebody shut Blackberry in the house,” he began. “I unplugged the hole but I couldn’t coax him out. Who do you suppose could have done a thing like that?”
Judy looked at Danny expecting him to answer, but he had his head down. He seemed to be very much interested in tying the lace on one of his sneakers.
“I don’t suppose it matters. Old Blackberry wasn’t complaining. I think he’s found a mouse or two in there to keep him busy until we come back for him. Come on, everybody,” Peter urged as he hurried them toward the car. “The important thing right now is lunch.”
“Lunch?” Danny questioned as if he had never heard the word.
“Yes, aren’t you hungry?”
“I’m starved,” the boy admitted. “Where will we eat?”
Peter smiled. “I guess the Beverly’s the nearest place unless you want to go back to the orphanage.”
“They eat at twelve. The dining room closes at one. It’s after that, isn’t it?” Danny asked.
Peter consulted his watch. “Way after. It’s nearly two. Shall we go?”
The Beverly turned out to be an old mansion made over into an inn. It was quiet in the daytime, but Judy could see that it must be quite a gay place at night. There was a dance floor and a platform for an orchestra as well as separate dining rooms for private parties.
“Thisisa surprise!” she exclaimed as they entered through the lobby and stood looking into the dining room. “I never expected to find a place like this way out here in the country.”
“It isn’t so far out in the country as you may think,” Peter told her. “This road follows the Genessee River north to Wellsville and on to Rochester. It crosses Route 17, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a sign at the crossroads directing tourists here. Like it?”
“Love it,” Judy replied. “We’ll have to come here some evening when the place is more lively.”
Danny bounced on one of two sofas opposite each other. “Golly! You could sleep on this,” he exclaimed. “What’s all this furniture for?”
“For people to sit on, of course,” Judy replied, laughing.
“You mean when they’re waiting for other people?”
“Yes, or when they want to rest. It’s sort of a living room for people who stay overnight here. Hotels always have lobbies—”
“Would my father stay overnight here if he came to see me?” Danny interrupted, as they followed the waiter to a table.
“He might.”
Judy and Peter looked at each other. Neither of them wanted to say anything against Danny’s father. Finally, just as they were finishing lunch, Danny produced the note his father had written.
“Here it is,” he said, fishing a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. “See what it says! ‘I am keeping my promise. I think I have money enough to start a good business. We’ll operate from our own home. I’ll take you back there to live with me very soon....’”
“It’s typewritten!” Judy exclaimed. She couldn’t help thinking of Holly’s stolen typewriter.
“Danny,” Peter asked, his voice grave, “have you any idea what this business is?”
The boy shook his head. He seemed as confused as they were. “I hope it’s farming, but it doesn’t sound much like it. Whatever it is, he wants me to help him.”
“Have you helped him, Danny?”
“No-oo,” was the reply to Peter’s question. Danny sounded a little uncertain. He couldn’t be the boy who ran off with Holly’s typewriter. Horace had judged that boy to be about sixteen or seventeen. Judy thought of the matron’s car. Could it have been “borrowed” by Danny’s father that day Miss Hanley and the Jewell sisters were picking apples? Certainly someone had taken it and then returned it.
“Are you sure you haven’t seen your father since he left this note?” Peter continued his questioning.
“Maybe I have. Maybe he was the man I was trailing,” Danny admitted. “I thought that man had no right to go in our house, and so I spied on him. I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t say one word.”
“Did he know you were there?”
“I don’t think so. I heard him muttering something about the beavers. It wasn’t a very nice thing to say. I don’t think my father would talk like that. He—”
If Danny finished answering Peter’s question, Judy failed to hear what he said. The sentence was suddenly drowned out by the shrill sound of a siren that grew increasingly louder. Danny rushed to the window with Judy following him. Peter joined them as soon as he had paid for their lunch.
“It’s fire engines!” Danny shouted above the noise outside. “They must be coming from Wellsville. Let’s watch and see which way they turn.”
Watching the fire engines from the porch, it was easy to see which way they were going. The Beverly Inn overlooked the valley beyond the crossroads. Here and there a house and a piece of cleared land broke the green carpet of trees that covered the hills in every direction.
It was a quiet scene except for the red fire engines streaking past, their sirens screaming. Judy had expected them to turn to the west toward Ulysses. The straight road ahead would take them to the house with the boarded-up windows. To Judy’s surprise and momentary relief, they took the road to the east.
“It can’t be too bad. There aren’t any towns in that direction, are there?” she asked.
“Not for quite a distance,” Peter began. “It may be some country place—”
“Not ours?” Danny wailed.
Thinking he meant his old home, Judy started to reassure him. But first she knew she must reassure herself. She liked excitement, but not the excitement of fires. Memories rushed back—her old school burning, the crackling flames when a fire was deliberately set to halt the rebuilding of Roulsville.
“We’ll find out where it is,” Peter promised. “Come on, Judy. We have to go that way to take Danny back to the orphanage. We may as well see what’s burning.”
“Could it be a forest fire?” Judy questioned when they were in the car.
“It could be. I hope it isn’t. We’ve had too much dry weather lately. Whatever it is,” Peter declared, “the firemen will have to work fast to keep it from becoming a forest fire.”
“What’s that funny cloud?” Danny asked, peering out of the car window.
Peter slowed down to let more fire engines pass and then followed them. Now Judy could see the cloud Danny had mentioned. But was it a cloud? White wisps of smoke curled into the sky like scrawny ghosts.
“That must be where the fire is,” she began. “Right there in the valley beyond the trees—”
“But that’s where the orphanage is!” Danny objected.
Judy gasped. She didn’t want to believe the orphanage was burning. The thought of all those children losing the one home they had was too much. Other thoughts, still more terrifying, quickly followed. Peter, not having any word of reassurance, drove on in silence. Suddenly Danny screamed.
“I can see it now. It is the orphanage! We have to get Ma out of there. She’ll go in after the babies and never come out!”
“Oh, Danny! Don’t say that,” cried Judy. “The firemen will make sure that Ma and all the children are safe, won’t they, Peter?”
“They’ll do their best,” he replied, heading straight for the burning building, “but they can use all the help we can give them.”
Judy agreed. As soon as Peter stopped the car she sprang out and started toward the orphanage. The windows glowed with a weird red light. The whole interior must be ablaze. Oh, Judy hoped all the children were out! Her one thought was to find Meta Hanley and tell her Danny was safe.
“Where’s the matron?” she asked a group of frightened orphans who were huddled together watching the firemen as they worked to keep the fire from spreading to the woods. They had been too late to save the building. Tongues of flame leaped through the upper windows and suddenly burst through the roof.
“It’s going to burn to the ground!” one small girl wailed. “Then where will we live?”
“I don’t know. Miss?” The group turned to Judy without answering the child’s question. “What’ll we do if the firemen can’t save anything? All our clothes are in there. We were in the dining room when it happened. Ma wouldn’t let us go back upstairs.”
“It’s a good thing she wouldn’t,” an older boy put in. “We’re all safe, but where will we live?”
“They’ll find you a place,” Judy replied hopefully.
“That’s right,” the orphans agreed. “Ma will think of something.”
“Where is she?” Judy asked.
“Over there!” The oldest orphan pointed. “She’s trying to keep that man from going back into the building. He helped carry the babies out. Why do you think he wants to go back?”
“I’ll find out,” Judy promised.
Suddenly the wind changed, and a dense cloud of smoke swirled downward from the burning orphanage. When it cleared Judy found, to her dismay, that she had lost sight of the matron and the man who had helped rescue the babies. She glanced back at Peter and saw that he was busy keeping people away from the fire. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her.
“Peter!” she called above the crackling and roaring of the fire. “I’m afraid there’s a man in there. He was trying to go back. Leave Danny there and help me find him.”
“We’ll find him, miss,” one of the firemen reassured her. “That is, if he’s in there.”
He started toward the orphanage. Judy hesitated a moment. Peter hadn’t heard her call. Should she follow the fireman? The smoke was so dense she could hardly see which way he had gone.
Suddenly she was startled by someone brushing past her. At the same moment she saw the matron. Two firemen were with her. Judy and the man who was trying to pass her were jerked back just in time. A heavy beam crashed in what would have been their path.
“See what would have happened if we’d let you go in there!” Meta Hanley pointed out. “Oh! There goes the roof!”
“Keep away!” the firemen warned as the flames roared upward, shooting sparks in every direction.
It was surprising how quickly people gathered to watch the fire. The crowd surged back, Judy along with them. Shaken by her narrow escape, she was glad to follow the advice of the firemen. Only the man resisted. It took all three firemen to hold him. The one who had gone ahead of Judy returned from another direction.
“Let me go!” the man shouted. “There’s a boy in there. He’ll burn to death if I don’t get him out.”
“You’re wrong, sir,” the fireman insisted. “There isn’t a living soul in that building. I counted heads, and everyone is out here.”
“Everyone except my son! Where is he?” the distraught father demanded. “Why are you trying to deceive me?”
“Iwouldn’t deceive you, George,” Meta Hanley replied quietly. She spoke as if continuing an earlier conversation. “I told you he didn’t come home for lunch. He went over to the beaver dam early this morning.”
A heavy beam crashed in Judy’s path.A heavy beam crashed in Judy’s path.
A heavy beam crashed in Judy’s path.
“He may have come back! He may have gone inside! Danny! Danny!” the man shouted.
Judy stepped up to him. She had heard enough. “Your son is too far away to hear you, Mr. Anderson, but he’s safe,” she said, sure now that the man really was Danny’s father. “The fireman is right. All the children are accounted for. Your son is with my husband. Wait here, and I’ll bring him over.”
Judy hurried off to where Peter and Danny stood.
“What happened to you?” Peter demanded. He had not seen her follow the fireman toward the burning building, but he could tell, from her sooty face, that she had been too near the fire.
“I was going to try to keep a man from going back in. Peter, it was Danny’s father,” she rushed on, “and he wants to see Danny right away.”
“Well, I don’t want to seehim, not if he’s a thief,” Danny spoke up unexpectedly. “I’m going to stay with Ma. No house at all is better than a house with stolen furniture in it. And if he cares so much about me, why didn’t he come to see me instead of sneaking around looking for the stuff the beavers stole?”
“That’s a good question, Danny,” Peter told him seriously.
“Well, if it’s such a good question, why aren’t we over there finding out the answers?” Judy urged. “Come on!”
“No,” Danny said, pulling back. “I don’t want to. If he’s the man I’ve been following around, I don’t like him.”
“Danny, give him a chance,” Judy pleaded. “Maybe he can explain everything.”
“Not if he’s the man in the ghost picture. I know whathewas up to. I heard him swearing and muttering to himself when his back was turned. I’d rather not see his face.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to see him.” Peter was firm at first, but at the heartsick look Danny gave him, he relented. “Very well,” he agreed with a meaning glance at Judy, “we’ll tell him you’re all right. He had reason to be worried. For all he knew, you could have been trapped upstairs when the boys started the fire.”
“How do you know it was started by boys?” Judy asked.
“Well, I’m not sure,” Peter replied, “but Danny’s two friends over there admitted that they were playing rocket with matches just before they came down for lunch. It’s a dangerous game, and they won’t ever play it again. This fire has taught them a lesson they won’t soon forget.”
“It’s taught me a lesson, too,” Danny put in. “I shouldn’t have gone off by myself all the time. I should have taken my friends with me. Next time I will.”
He smiled at the two shamefaced boys Peter had been questioning. They didn’t smile back. They were too close to tears.
“It’s all right, fellows,” Danny told them. “Ma will see that we have another place to live.”
The barn had been saved, and the fire had not spread to the woods. Firemen were still busy wetting down the brick skeleton of what used to be the orphanage when the Jewell sisters drove up in an ancient car. Dorcas was at the wheel.
“We’ll take six boys home with us, these three and these three younger ones,” she began in the commanding voice she often used when speaking to her sister. “Tell Meta, will you, Judy?”