CHAPTER XXVII.
A FRUITLESS SEARCH.
The landlord stared first at Tim’s head and then at that of Rodney Darringford, and both boys at once discovered that he was very much startled.
“What’s that?” demanded Tim sharply.
“Crazy Meg, I say. You must have seen her!”
“Who’s Crazy Meg?”
“Don’t know her?”
“I do not.”
“Never heard of her?”
“Never.”
“You must be strangers hereabouts, then?”
“We are.”
The landlord smiled.
“Well,” he said confidently, “you may not have seen her, but she has seen you. Robbed, too, eh? Up to her old tricks again. Well, well!”
Tim Downey started violently. He was shrewd enough to trace a clue of importance as to the thief of the bank notes in the tavern keeper’s words, and he replied eagerly:
“Yes, we were robbed, and you seem to know something about it.”
“I can surmise,” laughed the landlord; “anyone hereabouts could from your appearance.”
Rodney looked mystified.
“Our appearance?” he gasped.
“’Zactly.”
“How so?”
“You’ve got the mark.”
“What mark?”
“Crazy Meg’s mark.”
“What do you mean?”
“Go, both of you, and look in the mirror yonder and see.”
Both boys, impelled by a sense of mystery, hurried to a large looking-glass near by.
In amazement they discerned the blood-red X that showed prominently on their features.
They instinctively tried to rub it off.
“You’ll have to scrub to do that,” chuckled the tavern keeper.
Tim Downey was consumed with curiosity.
“See here, landlord!” he said half angrily, “what does this mean?”
“That Crazy Meg has seen you, I tell you.”
“But we didn’t see her.”
“Were you robbed?”
“We were.”
“When?”
“When--when we were asleep in a cabin near here last night.”
“That explains it, then.”
“How?”
“Well, she discovered you, robbed you and marked you, as she does everybody she don’t like.”
Then the man proceeded to tell what he knew of Crazy Meg.
She had been known as a wild and harmless wanderer in the district for years. Where she came from, no one knew, but it was believed that she had escaped from some insane asylum.
The reason of this was that often she would frantically denounce the bad men who had shut her up in a stone building with iron bars, whence she had escaped.
When she owned the world, she said, she would hire an army to go and tear down all the cruel insane asylums.
People would give her money out of charity, and this she hoarded and secreted in some one of her many hiding places among the hills, until she should get enough to hire her boasted army.
Often, too, she would drive away a whole flock of geese or chickens, and even cattle, and they would be found where she had penned them in, at some sequestered nook among the hills.
Whenever she met a person she did not like she would take out a bottle containing some red liquid, and make just such a mark on their clothing or house or hand or face as that on the faces of Tim and Rodney.
This had only been in the past year, and people said that she had in her wanderings seen some terrible crime and been frightened by its perpetrator.
The landlord told how one night recently Meg had secretly stolen into the tavern, visited the room of his two boys and gathered up all their school-books under her shawl to cart away, when the elder boy had discovered her.
Her great mania seemed to be to accumulate a vast amount of miscellaneous property, and hoard up what money she could steal or beg, to finally employ to hire her army of men to burn up or tear down all the insane asylums in the country.
“She just lives around the hut you say you slept in out of the storm last night,” said the tavern keeper.
“Where can we find her?” asked Tim.
“Ha! ha! find Meg? That’s a hard task, boys. Whenever she steals anything, she’s shrewd enough to keep out of the way for a time, and sometimes disappears for whole weeks. When she is around, she’s like a sprite, so quick and fleet-footed, and knowing a score of caves where she can hide when pursued. I guess the breakfast is cooking,” and the landlord went back to the kitchen of the tavern to attend to the meal for his guests.
The eyes of the two boys met in mutual excited questioning.
“Rodney!” exclaimed Tim, “there’s some hope.”
“About the money?”
“Yes.”
“You mean?”
“Crazy Meg.”
“She certainly took it.”
“Of course.”
“And we must find her.”
“We must.”
They dispatched the meal. Then Tim went off to Portsmouth, leaving Rodney at the tavern. He managed to sell what jewelry he had for forty dollars, and they decided to make their headquarters at the tavern.
They now set their wits to work to find Crazy Meg, as the sole object of their lives.
They even paid the tavern keeper’s boy ten dollars to assist them in the quest.
It proved of no avail. Here and there they got a trace of the crazy woman, but they could not locate her.
So the days drifted by, and then it occurred to Tim to call to his aid his two trusty friends of the past--Daley and Spofford.
He wrote the letter that had been alluded to by Daley in his conversation with Spofford, and which now had fallen into the hands of Marcus Ellison.
“It’s no use,” said Rodney one evening, after a day of fruitless tramping, “the woman has disappeared.”
“She’ll come back.”
“We’ll never get our money.”
“I don’t give up so easily.”
“I’ve a good mind to go back home.”
“All right; then you give up all claim on the money if you do. Wait until my friends, Daley and Spofford, arrive.”
“What will they do?”
“Soon find crazy Meg, you can depend on that.”
“Two gentlemen to see you, Downey,” said the tavern keeper, as the boys entered the place an hour later.
The landlord indicated a table where two men sat.
“Daley and Spofford,” murmured Tim joyfully.