the key grimly to his pocket. After a few minutes Mrs. Peel returned.
“Not a thing’s gone from the house, James,” she announced.
“Are you certain sure?” asked Mr. Ewing.
“Of course I am,” she replied, tartly.
“Well, now you take a look around the store.”
Mrs. Peel proceeded to do so. When she came to the money-drawer she found the check which Harry had placed there. She brought it to Mr. Ewing, and the latter looked it all over carefully.
“It looks perfectly good, don’t it, James?” she asked, anxiously.
“Yes, it looks all right,” he acknowledged, grudgingly, “but it’s the best-lookin’ checks that’s the worthlessest. Horace Collins, over to Highwood, took a check like this from a stranger once, and it wa’n’t a bit of good. Came back to him marked right across the face of it, ‘No funds.’ You can’t ever tell by lookin’ at a check what it’s worth, Amanda.”
Roy and Dick sat on the edge of the counter and swung their heels and grinned.
Mrs. Peel continued her investigation, and when
