The Curlytops and Their Playmates Part 22

"No, his clothes weren't ragged," added Ted.

"That's so," agreed Uncle Toby. "From the little look I had of him he wasn't very ragged. But then maybe he hasn't been a tramp very long, and it takes quite a while to make one's clothes ragged."

"It doesn't take Trouble long!" laughed Jan. "He can go out with a good new suit on and come back in half an hour with it all full of cuts and holes."

"Oh, well, Trouble is different," said Uncle Toby, with a chuckle.

Uncle Toby stood for a few moments looking toward the woods into which the strange man had run, and then, going to the well, filled the pail with water and put some in the radiator of the automobile. After that Uncle Toby went around to the back of the old cabin.

"Are you going to see if anybody else is there?" asked Jan, while Lola and Mary waited with curiosity for an answer.

"Let me come and help look!" cried Ted.

"So will I!" added Tom.

"If you fellows are going I might as well go, too," said Harry.

"No, you children stay where you are," called Uncle Toby. "I'm just going to take a look around, and then we'll go on to Crystal Lake. Stay where you are!"

Ted, Janet, and the others remained in the automobile, waiting for Uncle Toby to come back. Aunt Sallie was almost ready to doze off in a little sleep when Mr. Bardeen was seen coming around the corner of the cabin.

No one was with him, and there was no further sight of the man.

"Was anybody else in there?" asked Ted.

"No one," replied Uncle Toby. "The cabin was empty as far as I could see. I guess the man just stopped in there for shelter, and when he saw us he thought we owned the place and ran out."

"Who does own it?" asked Tom.

"It belongs to a lumberman named Newt Baker," answered Uncle Toby. "He used to stay here in the summer, and sometimes part of the winter. But he went away and since then no one has lived here--except that tramp,"

he added with a laugh. "Poor man," he went on, "I hope he finds some place to stay this winter. It looks as if it might be a hard one from the early snow we had."

Once more they started off; and a little later, nothing more having happened, they arrived safely at Crystal Lake.

"Oh, what a fine place!" cried Tom Taylor, as he saw the big body of water, on the sh.o.r.e of which was perched Uncle Toby's cottage. The lake was not frozen, except with a "skim" of ice here and there in little coves.

"It would be lovely in summer for picnics," said Lola. Neither she nor her brother had been to Crystal Lake before, but the Curlytops had visited it once or twice with Uncle Toby, though they had almost forgotten.

"Well, here we are, children!" called Uncle Toby, as he stopped the automobile near his "shack" as he often called it. "Now if you'll see that they get safely inside, Aunt Sallie, I'll soon be with you and we'll look after supper and get the beds ready."

"I not goin' to bed now!" cried Trouble. "I not goin' to bed now! I goin' to stay up an' see--an' see--Santa C'aus!" he burst out, after a moment of thought.

"Oh, you little tyke!" laughed Lola, catching him up in her arms. "Santa Claus won't be here for over a month."

"And you don't have to go to bed right away," added Janet.

Out of the auto piled the boys and girls, Skyrocket scrambling ahead of them to smell around and find out what sort of place this was that he had been brought to.

As Aunt Sallie, the Curlytops and their playmates went toward the front door of the cabin, the door was opened and a smiling man looked out.

"h.e.l.lo, folks!" he called. "I've got it good and warm for you, though it isn't as cold as it was." He was the man Uncle Toby had engaged to start the fires and to have everything in readiness for the coming of the Curlytops.

"Well, we're glad to get here, Jim Nelson," said Aunt Sallie, for she knew the man.

Uncle Toby put the car in the barn and came in with some of the boxes and bundles that had been piled in the automobile--bundles of clothes and things for the children.

"Well, you got here all right, I see," remarked Jim Nelson. "Have any trouble on the way?"

"Not to amount to anything," answered Uncle Toby. "Funny thing, though, down at Newt Baker's cabin. I stopped there to get some water from his deep well. And as I got near the cabin a man ran out and down the hill."

"A man!" exclaimed Mr. Nelson, while the children listened to the talk.

"I didn't know anybody was living there."

"There isn't--that is, not living there regularly," said Uncle Toby.

"But a man ran out. I took him for a tramp at first, only he wasn't ragged. But after he ran away I went and looked in."

"What did you see?" asked Mr. Nelson, and this the Curlytops and others wished to hear about.

"Well, it looked as if he'd been living there and doing his cooking for some time," went on Uncle Toby. "There were a lot of tin cans and odds and ends of loaves of bread, cracker crumbs, and the like on the table in the kitchen. Looked to me as if this man had been camping out in Newt Baker's shack."

"Very likely," said Mr. Nelson. "I don't like such characters hanging around Crystal Lake. We'll have to keep watch for him. If there are tramps around they may take things. As a matter of fact, food and little comforts of small value have been taken from some of the cottages and camps. Fred Tuller's son Tom wrote to the Pocono paper and made a whale of a story out of it. But from what you say the matter may be of more importance than we thought. At any rate, we'd better look into it."

"We'll keep a lookout, then," said Uncle Toby. "And I'll take another run down to the cabin some day, after I get the Curlytops settled here having fun," and he laughed at the boys and girls so they would not be afraid of the talk of tramps and men who might take things.

Mr. Nelson left a little after this, promising to come over the next day to see how they were.

Then came busy times in Uncle Toby's cabin at Crystal Lake. Aunt Sallie and the three girls got ready the supper, while the boys opened boxes and bundles. Skyrocket ran about here and there, poking his nose into everything, and Trouble was almost as bad, for he, too, wanted to see everything that was going on.

At last, however, things began to get "straightened out," as the Curlytops' mother would have said, and they sat down to a fine supper.

Every one had a good appet.i.te, even Skyrocket, who had gnawed clean the bone Uncle Toby got him at the butcher shop.

"Let's play hide and go seek before we go to bed," proposed Jan, as they sat about the open fireplace in the big living room after supper.

"Will it be all right?" asked Mary.

"Will what be all right?" Jan wanted to know.

"I mean won't your uncle be mad if we play in his house?" went on Mary.

"Oh, dear no!" laughed Jan. "That's what he brought us up here for; didn't you, Uncle Toby?"

"Didn't I what, Jan?" he asked, for he had been talking to Aunt Sallie about the beds.

"Didn't you bring us up here so we could have a good time?"

"Of course I did!" exclaimed Mr. Bardeen. "What do you want to do now?"

"Play hide and go seek. May we?"