"I saw it, Tilly, a red mitten. This is the yarn that was caught on the basket." Polly drew from her pocket the red ravelling, wound upon a bit of paper. "_Yarn!_" echoed Tilly, contemptuously taking a bit between her thumb and finger. "I call that worsted!" "And are your mittens yarn?" cried Tilly, eagerly. "Because that would prove--" "I never said they were," said Tilly, quickly, the color deepening in her cheeks, "I never said anything about them, and I sha'n't show them to anybody. And I never saw your old spoons in all my born days--so there!" Tilly would have shut the door, but Patty prevented her. "Oh, Tilly, I'm afraid you don't realize. Uncle Reuben will send a sheriff to arrest you. And the girls have thought so much of you--especially Ruby Nutting." "You needn't say a word about _her_." Tilly swallowed a lump chokingly. "You needn't tell her, nor anything. She hasn't got anything to do with it. She's give me all the chance I've had to get good times, and her father has been awful good to us; and now I suppose they won't be any more. But--but poor folks must expect to be called thieves, and took up. The worst is, now they'll be sure Alf broke into that store, and he didn't! no more'n your cousin did! No, that isn't the worst. The worst is that Miss Farnham, the milliner, won't have me now! She was going to take me half a day to do chores and help her; 'twas an awful good chance! It chirked mother right up to think we were going to be so much like folks, and now--" Tilly kept her voice steady, but it was by a strong effort. "Tilly, it might come right now if you would only tell all about it," said Patty, earnestly. "It seems as if there were some mystery." "You go 'long home!" cried Tilly, fiercely, and slammed the door upon Patty. Her sharp, hard, little features were working convulsively, and Patty heard a long sob inside the door. She went home feeling more strongly than ever that there was a mystery, and pleaded earnestly for Tilly. Aunt Eunice joined her, and promised to go and see Tilly's mother, and talk with her about the matter if Uncle Reuben would delay his sterner measures. They might not have been able to persuade him to do so--his bitter grief for his son had served to harden him against Alf Coombs's relatives--if nature had not seemed to take Tilly's part and enforced a delay; the heavy snow-fall was followed by a pouring rain and what they called at Butternut Corner an old-fashioned January thaw. Uncle Reuben was a mill-owner, and his property was threatened by the freshet, so he had no time to think of Tilly Coombs. Aunt Eunice had a touch of her old enemy rheumatism, and could not go down to confer with Mrs. Coombs, and so the matter remained unsettled.