Patty lay awake a long time that night, dreading her mission; she wished she might ask Ruby Nutting to help her, but Uncle Reuben thought it best that no one should be told. When she did sleep she dreamed a dreadful dream, in which Tilly Coombs was being pursued down the long hill, through the great snow-drifts, by an army of spoons with grotesque faces, their mouths made of the initial letter that marked the stolen spoons--O for Oliver, Grandma Barclay's maiden name; they were driving Tilly into the mill-pond, which was open as if it were summer, in spite of the January drifts, and Patty awoke with a start and a cry. But bad as was the fantastic dream, Patty said to herself that the reality was worse. When Pelatiah opened the back door the next morning, a fine pair of chickens plucked and dressed hung upon the knob. That circumstance seemed mysterious. Why should a thief who would steal a dozen spoons have a weak conscience in the matter of a pair of chickens? Where could Tilly Coombs get a pair of chickens? Patty added these mysteries to the one about the ravelled mitten upon which Tilly had knit and knit and yet worn it unmended, and felt as bewildered as she did when Anson made her listen to something out of the rebus corner of the _Butternut Weekly Voice_. But Uncle Reuben still insisted that it was a clear case; the thief had restored the chickens in order to stifle suspicion about the spoons. As to how the thief became possessed of the chickens, he "didn't think it would trouble Coombses to rob hen-roosts." So as Patty set out to accuse Tilly of the theft the little spark of hope which the deepened mystery had aroused in her was almost quenched. Tilly came to the door, and Patty tried to look at her with judicial severity, as she had seen Uncle Reuben look at offenders, but she broke down suddenly at sight of Tilly's beaming, friendly face. "Oh, Tilly," she cried, "you will give them back, won't you? It was such a dreadful thing to do! But no one shall ever know; Uncle Reuben says so, if you will only give them back." The warmth and color faded out of Tilly's face until it looked wan and pinched in the morning light. "It's no matter about the chickens. You needn't even have given those back. Of course it's always terrible to--to take things, but if you'll only give back the spoons." "_The spoons?_" echoed Tilly, and there seemed to be such genuine bewilderment in her tone that Patty felt inclined to believe Uncle Reuben's accusation that she was sly. "I don't know anything about any spoons." "Tilly, your mitten caught on the basket and was ravelled, and--and I saw you knitting it up in the barn." Patty's tone was rather pitiful than accusing, but Tilly's face flamed angrily. "I didn't s'pose you was one to go peeking round and spying on folks," she cried. "I guess I've got a right to do a little knitting anywheres that I'm a mind to, and--and you can't say 'twas a mitten."