The door closed again, and the farmer returned 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 she was through she did some figuring, dipping the little stump of a pencil at frequent intervals into the corner of her mouth. Finally: “It’s just as they said, James,” she announced. “I can’t see as anything’s missing except the canned things and the bacon. And that foots up to just eight dollars and forty cents.” “Glad to hear it,” said Mr. Ewing, in tones which belied his assertion. “It might have been a heap worse.” He turned to the boys. “If Amanda’s willing to take that money in cash instead of paper and let you off, I ain’t got anything more to say. If I was her I’d have ye all put in jail, but women-folks are soft-hearted and easy-goin’, and it’s for her to say.” “Of course,” said Mrs. Peel, hurriedly, “this check may be all right. I don’t get many of them, you see, and don’t pretend to be able to tell the good ones from the bad. But James says it’s risky, and so if you gentlemen wouldn’t mind just giving me the money instead--” “We’d do it in a minute for you, ma’am,” Roy answered, “but this gentleman here has got on my nerves. So I guess that, seeing we aren’t liable for that money anyway, it’ll have to be the check or nothing.” “Didn’t you agree--” began the farmer, angrily. “There, there, James,” Mrs. Peel soothed. “There ain’t any cause to pursue the subject. They’re right, I guess; they ain’t bound to pay back what the burglars took, and I don’t know as I ought to take the money from them.” She laid the check on the edge of the counter and observed it dubiously. “That’s all right, ma’am,” said Dick. “We want you to have it. We’ve made it up between us. It wasn’t our fault that the store was broken into, but still we were left in charge, after a fashion, and we’d feel better about it if you let us pay.” Farmer Ewing laughed sarcastically. “Gettin’ out of it pretty cheap at that, I guess,” he sneered. “If it was my store--”