Free Chance of a Lifetime by Grace Livingston Hill

eyes.
    Then the train was upon them, and everybody tried to say a last good-bye at once, and Robert was standing on the platform, a Rockland pennant in his hand that someone had given him; Alan on the top step below, and everybody yelling messages in perfect babel.
    The train began to move, and Alan swung off with a quick handclasp. Robert, waving his pennant, gave them all a swift, inclusive smile, and then put his eyes upon little Lancey, standing back against the brick station, waving a bit of a pink-bordered handkerchief and smiling through unmistakable tears. Her little pink frock was the last thing he could identify as the train swept him out of sight of the hometown that had never before meant so much to him but had suddenly become wondrously dear.
    “I think that was the greatest thing you ever did!” said Sherrill with shining eyes, as Alan put her into his car and drove her back to the Washburn house. “You may do some things greater in your life, but I shall always feel this was the greatest.”
    “Great?” said Alan. “Nothing great about it at all. I was having the time of my life. Sherry, he’s a prince! What a fool I was. I wonder who else I’m misunderstanding and underrating. I’m going to get out the list of people I don’t like, and the people I consider my enemies, and see if I can’t clean them off the slate. I shouldn’t wonder if I find out I’m a pretty mean kind of cuss, and didn’t know enough to know it.”
    “Alan! Stop it! I say! Oh, it was great. And you did it all. Did you see how happy he looked when they cheered, and how surprised? And Alan, he told me he was going to study the Bible with us. He told me how you had been talking to him.”
    While they were talking it over, Lancey, in her little faded pink frock, with her heart all happy and sorry, and her face all shining and kind of teary around the lashes, was walking demurely back to the millinery store with her bundle, utterly forgetful of the scolding she would probably receive because she was a minute late from having watched the express out of sight. But, for once, Lancey didn’t care.
    When Alan left Sherrill at her home and drove back to the hardware store, his heart grew suddenly heavy. The affairs of his father’s business settled down upon his shoulders like so much lead. There were all the papers of the safe to be checked over, to make sure nothing was gone. How was he to know anyway? Was there a list somewhere? He must find out somehow.
    Then there was that Rawlins coming to see him at eleven o’clock, and somehow he felt less prepared to meet him than ever. If he could only take him out and thrash him, as he had done on the intruder the night before. Perhaps he had already! If the tale Lancey Kennedy had told to Bob meant anything at all, it might mean that. In which case, would the man come at all? And would he be able to recognize his opponent of the midnight fray? There was that to investigate of course, and perhaps he should do it at once. He might have to out the police on the matter. He must see Lancey. How the dickens was he to do that, and keep his promise to Bob not to let her aunt see him talking to Lancey? Well, it must be done somehow.
    And then there was the mortgage. The real great trouble of all! What should he do next? Oh, if Judge Whiteley would only come home.
    Lancey relieved him of one trouble as soon as he arrived at the store by running in for a paper of tacks, and although she seemed in a great hurry, she answered all his questions quite clearly, so that when she left he felt fairly sure that Rawlins was his burglar, for Rawlins was boarding at Mrs. Brower’s. But what could he want from the safe? And—did he get it or not? If only his father was able to be asked a few questions. But the doctor’s orders were very strict. He must not be disturbed for several days yet.
    Alan spent an hour going over all the papers he could find, carefully, and only grew more and more perplexed. He tried