Chapter XI: Mysteries Accumulate

"And if you go to the store, or anywhere else for Mrs. McCall or Linda, remember _don't_ take that bracelet with you," commanded Agnes in a most imperative manner, fairly transfixing her two smaller sisters with an index finger. "Remember!"

"Ruthie didn't say so," complained Dot. "Did she, Tess?"

"But I guess we'd better mind what Agnes says when Ruth isn't at home," confessed Tess, more amenable to discipline. "You know, Aggie has got to be responsible now."

"Well," muttered the rebellious Dot, "never mind if she is 'sponserble, she needn't be so awful bossy about it!"

Agnes did, of course, feel her importance while Ruth was away. It was not often that she was made responsible for the family welfare in any particular. And just now the matter of the silver bracelet loomed big on her horizon.

She scarcely expected the advertisement in the _Morning Post_ to bring immediate results. Yet, it might. The Gypsies' gift to the little girls was a very queer matter indeed. The suggestion that the bracelet had been stolen by the Romany folk did not seem at all improbable.

And if this was so, whoever had lost the ornament would naturally be watching the "Lost and Found" column in the newspaper.

"Unless the owner doesn't know he has lost it," Agnes suggested to Neale.

"How's that? He'd have to be more absent-minded than Professor Ware not to miss a bracelet like that," scoffed her boy chum.

"Oh, Professor Ware!" giggled Agnes, suddenly. "_He_ would forget anything, I do believe. Do you know what happened at his house the other evening when the Millers and Mr. and Mrs. Crandall went to call?"

"The poor professor made a bad break I suppose," grinned Neale. "What did he do?"

"Why, Mrs. Ware saw the callers coming just before they rang the bell and the professor had been digging in the garden. Of course she straightened things up a little before she appeared in the parlor to welcome the visitors. But the professor did not appear. Somebody asked for him at last and Mrs. Ware went to the foot of the stairs to call him.

"'Oh, Professor!' she called up the stairs, and the company heard him answer back just as plain:

"'Maria, I can't remember whether you sent me up here to change my clothes or to go to bed.'"

"I can believe it!" chortled Neale O'Neil. "He has made some awful breaks in school. But I don't believe _he_ ever owned that bracelet, Aggie."

* * * * *

The first person who displayed interest in the advertisement in the _Post_ about the bracelet, save the two young people who put it in the paper, proved to add much to the mystery of the affair and nothing at all to the peace of mind of Agnes, at least.

Agnes was busy at some mending--actually hose-darning, for Ruth insisted that the flyaway sister should mend her own stockings, which Aunt Sarah's keen eyes inspected--when she chanced to raise her head to glance out of the front window of the sewing room. A strange looking turnout had halted before the front gate.

The vehicle itself was a decrepit express wagon on the side of which in straggling blue letters was painted the one word "JUNK," but the horse drawing the wagon was a surprisingly well-kept and good looking animal.

The back of the wagon was piled high with bundles of newspapers, and bags, evidently stuffed with rags, were likewise in the wagon body. The man climbing down from the seat just as Agnes looked did not seem at all like the usual junk dealer who passed through Milton's streets heralded by a "chime" of tin-can bells.

He was a small, swarthy man, and even at the distance of the front gate from Agnes' window the girl could see that he wore gold hoops in his ears. He was quick but furtive in his motions. He glanced in a birdlike way down the street and across the Parade Ground, which was diagonally opposite the old Corner House, before he entered the front gate.

"He'd better go around to the side door," thought Agnes aloud. "He must be a very fashionable junkman to come to the front of the house. And at that I don't believe Mrs. McCall has any rags or papers to sell just now."

The swarthy man came straight on to the porch and up the steps. Agnes heard the bell, and knowing Linda was busy and being likewise rather curious, she dropped her stocking darning and ran into the front hall.

The moment she unlatched the big door the swarthy stranger inserted himself into the house.

"Why! who are you?" she demanded, fairly thrust aside by the man's eagerness.

She saw then that he had a folded paper in one hand. He thrust it before her eyes, pointing to a place upon it with a very grimy finger.

"You have found it!" he chattered with great excitement. "That ancient bracelet which has for so many generations been an heirloom--yes?--of the Costello. Queen Alma herself wore it at a time long ago. You have found it?"

Agnes was made almost speechless by his vehemence as well as by the announcement itself.

"I--I--What _do_ you mean?" she finally gasped.

"You know!" he ejaculated, rapping on the newspaper with his finger like a woodpecker on a dead limb. "You put in the paper--_here_. It is lost. You find. _You_ are Kenway, and you say the so-antique bracelet shall be give to who proves property."

"We will return it to the owner. Only to the owner," interrupted Agnes, backing away from him again, for his vehemence half frightened her.

"Shall I bring Queen Alma here to say it was her property?" he cried.

"That would be better. If Queen Alma--whoever she is--owns the bracelet we will give it to her when she proves property."

The little man uttered a staccato speech in a foreign tongue. Agnes did not understand. He spread wide his arms in a gesture of seemingly utter despair.

"And Queen Alma!" he sputtered. "She is dead these two--no! t'ree hundred year!"

"Mercy me!" gasped Agnes, backing away from him and sitting suddenly down in one of the straight-backed hall chairs. "Mercy me!"