"Speak low!" the farmer glanced about him. "There's no one round, and yet you never can tell; the folks don't know. It's m' wife's nevy I'm speakin' of, Myron Allen, her sister's son. He's been stayin' with us since his mother died--father dead, too--and he got to be like our own to us. He went to school, and he helped me with the chores and helped m' wife with hers, and was handy boy all round. Mebbe we worked him too hard; he's only sixteen. We never thought it, but mebbe we did. Yet he seemed happy--whistlin' all over the place, jokin' and like that; and his cheeks was round and red as a Baldwin apple. Yes, sir, he enjoyed good health, and everybody made of him, and he was good as gold. Yes, sir, no one couldn't ask nor wish for a better boy than what Myron was till last summer. Then--well, 'twas bad company begun it." "You bet it was!" murmured Pippin. "Go on, sir!" "'Twas hayin' last year done the mischief. Myron hired out to a man over Tinkham way--that was after he'd got through with the hayin' here--and there he met up with some that was no better than they should be by all accounts. Pippin, that boy left us an innocent boy, that never had a bad word in his mouth that ever _I_ heard, nor no one round here. He come back--" the gruff voice faltered--"he come back different, sir. He'd slap through his work and then off he'd go and set down behind the shed and read. He'd got a lot of books from some one he'd met up with; them Sleuth stories, you know, and like that, little paper books. You've seen 'em?" "I've seen 'em!" Pippin nodded. "He'd set there by the hour, readin' and readin', and oftentimes the cows bellerin' their hearts out to be milked. I'd come back from the field and find him with his nose in the book, and his eyes startin' out of his head. There warn't no cows nor no farm nor nothin' for him those times. I'd get real worked up, now and then, and give him a good callin' down, and he'd do better for a spell; but that was only the beginning." He glanced round again, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "There's more to it. Things begun to be missed round here! It's been goin' on all winter; nothin' great, just a little here and a little there. Folks begun to talk, and some claimed 'twas tramps, and some begun to wonder--He's only a boy, you understand, Pippin! Oftentimes the thinkin' part grows up slower than what the bodily part does, ain't that so?" Pippin met the anxious eyes cheerfully. "That's so! Why, likely he wasn't more than ten years old, come to look inside of him. Where you'll find one boy that knows just where hookin' ends and stealin' begins, you'll find a dozen that don't. And there's more to it than that; but go on, sir! I'm just as inter_est_ed as I can be!"