Peeping around the high bushes again, they saw him leaning idly on the picket fence. He seemed to have a stout cane, and was smoking a cigar, though in his undoubted eagerness to keep "tabs" on the humble house he forgot to draw smoke from the weed between his teeth. "I must say this is going it pretty strong," grumbled Toby, half under his breath; "to have that chap prowling around Fred's home, just like he was afraid the boy'd get out of his grip, and so meant to find a stronger hold on him." "That's it," assented Steve; "he wants to learn why Fred seems to hold back. He means to meet the little mother, and the two small girls, one of 'em a cripple in the bargain. It's a shame that he should push himself in on that family, and he a city sport in the bargain. We ought to find a way to chase him out of town, don't you think, Jack?" "Hold up, and perhaps we may learn something right now," whispered the other, after a hasty look; "because there's Fred's mother coming out of the door." "Gee whiz! can she be meaning to meet this man?" ventured Toby, apparently appalled by his own suspicion. "Well, hardly likely," Jack told him, "because the man has ducked down as if he didn't want to be seen by her, though he's looking like everything all the while." "That's little Barbara Badger, the five-year-old sister of Fred," Steve was saying. "She's got a basket on her arm, too, and I reckon her ma is sending her to the store down the street for a loaf of bread, or something like that. Everybody seems to agree that Barbara is the most winsome little girl in the whole of Chester." "Barring none," admitted Toby, immediately. "Why, she's just like a little golden-haired fairy, my dad says, and since he's something of an artist he ought to know when he sees one. Yep, you were right, Steve, the child is going after something at the store. I wonder now would that wretch have the nerve to stop Barbara, and try to get some information from the little thing?" "What if he tries to kidnap her?" suggested Steve, suddenly, doubling up his sturdy looking fist aggressively, as though to indicate that it would not be safe for the stranger to attempt such a terrible thing while he was within hearing distance. "Oh! I hardly think there's any fear of that happening," Jack assured the aggressive member of the trio. "But he acts now as if he meant to drop back here out of sight, so perhaps we'd better slip around this bunch of bushes so he won't learn how we've been watching him."