Of course Annie Laurie told Azalea and Carin all about it as the three sat together the next day after luncheon, in the schoolroom.

“Papa said he’d seen you,” Carin answered. “He was horseback riding and late getting home, and he said he saw you out with the Disbrows, and that Mrs. Disbrow looked like a ghost that had got back to earth and didn’t like it very well. But he thought you were wonderful to do that. He didn’t quite see how you could, feeling as you do, but he thought it lovely of you just the same!”

“Well,” said Annie Laurie. “You see I didn’t feel quite the way I thought I did when I saw that poor woman and Hannah; and then poor Sam looked at me as if he thought I could set his world right if I only would.”

“It’s a terribly twisted world,” mused Azalea. “Now, what if poor little Hannah has her eyes straightened, and Sam goes to college, and Mrs. Disbrow gets her health out West all out of the money that was stolen from you, Annie Laurie? Those are all good things to have happen.”

“Yes, they are,” answered Annie Laurie without anger. “They are good things. But you remember what Elder Mills said that last night about avoiding lies in word and act. I remember particularly because it was something like what the preacher had been saying over to the Baptist church only a few Sundays before. It seemed to me they were all harping on that subject, but I begin to see why, now. I can see that all false things are lies—that stealing is a sort of lie—a saying that something is yours which isn’t. It will be like that with the Disbrows, I suppose; no matter what good comes to them, it won’t seem good—at least not to Mr. Disbrow, who knows the truth about how he came by the money. It’s dreadful, when you come to think of it, that a nice boy like Sam should be having things out of that money he’s no right to.”

“You oughtn’t to speak as if it was an absolutely sure thing that he took the money, Annie Laurie,” warned Carin. “Papa says we mustn’t do that. He says it’s a kind of crime in itself to accuse people of sins when you’re not sure they’re guilty.”

“I’ll try not to,” sighed Annie Laurie penitently, “but it’s very hard. And, oh, Carin, it’s getting to be so sad at the house with the old aunts always talking about the lost money and hunting and hunting for it, and the business going to pieces and I not able to prevent it.”

That night when the Carsons sat at dinner, Carin told her father that Annie Laurie had said Mrs. Disbrow was expecting her husband to take the family West.

Mr. Carson brought his fist down on the table.

“Now, that can’t be,” he cried. “I won’t have that! I simply won’t. No matter what risk I run of doing the man an injustice, I won’t have him leave this community. He’s under suspicion and he’s got to stay here. I’m sorry for him, sometimes, when I see him walk into town and all the men turn their backs on him and walk away. Of course, it isn’t really fair—or at least, it may not be fair, for it is possible that he is as innocent as you or I. But if he is guilty, he’s getting only a small part of what he deserves. At any rate, I can understand that he’s very uncomfortable in this town nowadays, and that he’d like mighty well to get out of it. But he shan’t, if I have anything to say about it.”

The next morning, however, Annie Laurie came with startling news.

“They’re gone!” she cried as she dashed into the schoolroom.

“Who?” the girls asked in unison.

“The Disbrows.”

“No!”

“Yes, they have. I was walking along the road and I happened to look over toward their house, and there wasn’t any smoke coming from the chimney. And there was something about the place—I can’t describe it, because the curtains are forever down anyway—but something that looked deserted. So I pelted across the field and knocked at the door and no one answered. And then I tried the door and it was locked. I saw the chickens were gone, too, and the cow and the horses. They all went in the night.”

“But do you think Sam would let his family act like that?”

“Sam went to Rutherford yesterday to the academy. No, I don’t think he knew a thing about it. He came over after I got home from school to say good-bye, and he was very happy and—oh, well—good, you know. No one could have looked as he did if he had thought his father was a thief and his family sneaks.”

“But my goodness,” exclaimed Azalea, “don’t you suppose he’s noticed how the men were treating his father—turning their backs on him and all that? Pa McBirney said he just couldn’t bring himself to shake hands with him any more. Don’t you suppose Mr. Disbrow ever had spoken of that at home?”

“He always was bitter and fault-finding anyway,” said Annie Laurie. “Mrs. Disbrow told me that. I suppose a little more or less complaining wouldn’t mean anything to her.”

“But she certainly must have wondered at having the house torn up in an hour or two, and at setting out in the night that way like fugitives,” said Carin.

“Oh, well, you know she hated to go out driving with me for fear the neighbors would be peeping at her, so I suppose she was well pleased to go in the night. She’d hate to have folks find out what a poor little handful of things they had, and all that.”

“Of course,” said Azalea, “it would be easy enough to find which way they went, by the wagon marks. They must have had the cow tied on behind the wagon, and so they could be followed easily and overtaken if—if you wanted them to be, Annie Laurie.”

“Yes,—I know. If—I wanted them to be.”

The girl sank into a chair and rested her face in her hand, staring straight before her. Azalea and Carin said nothing. They were thinking very, very hard, too. The silence was long and intense. Then they heard Miss Parkhurst’s steps approaching down the hall. Annie Laurie struck her two hands together sharply.

“I can’t do it!” she cried. “I can’t let Sam’s people be chased like that and brought back. I may be wrong, and weak, and not fair to the poor old aunts, but I just can’t do it, that’s all there is to it.”

Carin and Azalea looked at her with perfect understanding.

“No,” said Carin softly, “you couldn’t do that, could you? Plenty of people could, and they’d be just and right—maybe. But you couldn’t, and I like you, Annie Laurie, because you can’t.”

Azalea clapped her hands.

“So do I!” she agreed. “It will all come right for you, Annie. That’s what dear Ma McBirney would say if she knew. Somehow it will all come right. But to have that poor, sneaking, miserable man chased, and that sick woman, and little Hannah who is half-frightened out of her life anyway—oo-oo-oo! You couldn’t.”

Miss Parkhurst opened the door. The three girls arose respectfully and answered her good morning.

“Algebra this morning,” she said briskly. Perforce they turned their thoughts to matters that were anything but exciting.

But if they could have known the experiences their friend Sam Disbrow was going through, their lesson would have been even poorer than it was—and Miss Parkhurst had already been obliged to tell them that as mathematicians she did not consider them brilliantly successful.

Sam had set off with a light heart. For the first time in his life he was going away from home—that depressing and melancholy home, against the gloom of which he had set all the forces of his really happy and brave nature. But the home had been too much for him. He could feel it slowly and surely dragging him down into that pit of gloom and distrust where the others lived, and to leave it behind, to have a chance to go to school and get the education which he felt he must have if he was to make anything of himself, filled him not only with joy but gratitude.

Of course, he still wondered how his father had been able to manage it. He knew that they were very poor—that his father had not been able to make a success at anything. His garden never flourished like that of his neighbors; his chickens never laid well; his cow gave only a fraction of the milk she should; his cotton was but a scanty crop; and even as an undertaker, the only one in Lee, he sometimes was passed over for his remote rival in Rutherford.

Recently things had been going even more wrong than usual. Sam could not explain it, but a general dislike of the whole Disbrow family seemed to have invaded the town. His father never had been popular, but lately Sam had noticed signs of actual aversion. How was it to be accounted for? If ever the faintest shadow of an idea as to the real reason for this dislike entered Sam’s mind, he thrust it out, strangled and unrecognizable, from his consciousness. He believed in his father because he believed in himself. He was not a person to whom suspicion came naturally, although he had lived in the midst of it all his days. There is a thing called reaction—the sharp turning of the spirit against a condition or an idea. Sam had reacted against the gray dispositions in his family. He was ready to blossom into the scarlet of courage and good will, of power and joy, if only a little sun could shine on him.

And now it seemed to be shining. He was going away to school as other boys did. There would be a number of fellows he knew, and chief among them would be Richard Heller, the banker’s son. He liked Heller. He counted on him to “show him the ropes” at the academy.

It was a long time since he had been in the smart town of Rutherford. His heart leaped in him as he stepped out from the station, his bag in his hand, and felt the throb of the busy town about him. Automobiles were ranged in line about the station, carriages with well-kept horses stood in the shade beneath the fine elms, the paved streets were clean, the street cars new and fresh looking, and everywhere were busy, active people, moving along with that air of confidence and efficiency which too often was lacking at Lee. And it exhilarated Sam. All that was strong and eager in him liked it. He wanted to be a part of a community like that.

He took the street car that ran to the academy, and sat wrapt in interest at noting the fine homes, the well-kept lawns, the excellent public buildings. People were doing things here that were worth while, said Sam to himself. And he, in his way, was going to be a part of it. Perhaps he could stay in the Academy till he was graduated—with honors, maybe—and then he would stay on at Rutherford, and become a part of its busy, stirring life. He would have a home like the one he was passing, with tall windows, and the light streaming in through beautiful trees, and a porch like that, with his family sitting out on it in the open, and not hiding away in the shadow. Then there would be bright flowers, like those in that yard, and friends coming and going the way they were from that house. And they would be laughing—Annie Laurie loved to laugh—and sometimes they would eat on the lawn. But he drew himself up with a flush. What had Annie Laurie to do with it all? A girl like that—would she care seriously for one of the queer, shiftless tribe of Disbrow? Sam hit his knee angrily. Let him attend to what was before him and stop thinking nonsense.

He reached the Academy, and walked along under its wonderful white oaks to the Ballenger dormitories, where he knew Heller stayed. Perhaps Heller could get him a room near his own. It was rather a trick to get in the Ballenger dormitories and the fellows who succeeded were considered lucky. But perhaps Heller could manage it for him somehow—they always had been good friends.

He was directed along the corridors, hung with their many pictures, and decorated with plaster casts, to a corner room on the third story.

He knocked expectantly.

“Come!” commanded Heller’s voice.

Sam threw open the door.

“Dick!” he cried, “I’ve come on to school. What do you think of that?”

He dropped his suit case and hastened toward Richard with outstretched hand.

Dick took it silently. His eyes, that used to be so cordial in their glances, turned upon Sam with a scrutinizing look. They searched his drooping face sharply. Then something like the old expression returned. Sam was not slow. He saw that something was quite wrong—that Dick had been thinking evil of him in some way, and that now that he had met him face to face, he was finding it difficult to sustain the suspicion.

“What’s the matter, man?” Sam cried. “What are you looking at me like that for? Why don’t you speak?”

“Sit down,” answered Dick brusquely. “Something is the matter, Sam, but I’d rather be skinned than tell you what it is. All the same I’m not going to go around snubbing you and leaving you in the dark after all the good times we’ve had together.”

“I should think not, indeed,” cried Sam. “Skin away, old man. Let’s have the operation over with.”

Dick, it was evident, dared not give himself time to think. He blurted out what he had to say.

“My dad wrote me that you were thinking of coming down here to school.”

“Well?”

“Well, and he said the neighbors all were wondering where in the dickens your father got the money to send you.”“I don’t know,” answered Sam angrily, “that it is any of their blamed business.”

“It mightn’t be under some circumstances,” Dick went on. “But—”

“Yes?”

“This is where the skinning process comes in.”

“Rip ahead.”

“But they think it mighty queer, you know, that your dad should come into money just at the time that Simeon Pace’s money disappeared.”

Sam was on his feet.

“Say!” he gasped, “I don’t understand.”

“They say,” went on Dick, gulping with distress, yet determined to finish the whole story then and there, “that Simeon Pace carried his money in his hollow tin arm, and that your father took that arm from Simeon Pace’s body, and helped himself to the money. Now, there you are, and—dang it, Sam,—you’ll have to try to forgive me for telling you.”

Sam sank into his seat again and sat staring. The little clock on the mantel shelf ticked off the seconds briskly—ticked on and on, and still Sam sat and stared, and Dick waited, hardly daring to breathe. He could see that Sam was going over the whole situation—was balancing this against that, thinking over the things he had noticed, “sizing up” the situation with his good clear brain.

Suddenly he got up and seized his suit case.

“Where you going?” shouted Dick.

“Home,” said Sam quietly. “I’m going home.”

Dick ran forward and, grasping Sam’s hand, wrung it with all his strength.

“Oh, Sam,” he cried. “How I wish it could have been otherwise! But I had to tell you. I couldn’t let a thing like that lie between us.”

“No,” said Sam wearily. “It’s got to be cleared up. Living a lie! I remember a sermon—Annie Laurie and I heard it—living a lie! No, I couldn’t. Good-bye, Dick. It—it wasn’t for me, was it?” He looked about the charming room, and through the window at the great campus. “Good-bye. And—thank you. You did right. It was the only thing to do, since we were such old—”

“Friends!” cried Dick with a half-sob. “Such old friends, Sam. Yes, go home and clear it up. And come back, old man—whatever you do, come back!”