"Yes. He said he had been in a Home up near Cherry Farm, where you were last summer," went on the clerk.

"What did he want?" asked Mr. Martin.

"I don't know. He didn't say, but stated that he would wait until you came back. So I gave him a chair just outside the office. He seemed to know about you and Ted and Jan."

"A lame boy! Oh, maybe it was Hal Chester!" cried Jan.

"But Hal isn't lame any more," Mr. Martin reminded her. "At least he is only a little lame. Did this boy limp much?" he asked the clerk.

"Well, not so very much. He seemed anxious to see you, though."

"Where is he?" asked Mr. Martin. "I'll be glad to see him. Where is he now?"

"That's what I don't know. I had to leave the office a minute, and when I came back he was gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes, he wasn't here at all. And, what is more, something went with him."

"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Martin.

"I mean the lame boy took with him a pocketbook and some money when he went out," answered the clerk.

CHAPTER IX

THROUGH THE ICE

Mr. Martin said nothing for a few seconds after hearing what his clerk told him. Ted and Jan looked at each other. They did not know what to say.

"Are you sure the lame boy took the pocketbook and the money?" asked the Curlytops' father of his clerk.

"Pretty sure; yes, sir. The pocketbook--it was a sort of wallet I had some papers in besides money--was left on this bench right near where he was sitting while he was waiting for you. I went away and when I came back he was gone and so was the pocketbook. He must have taken it."

"Was there much money in it?"

"Only about fifteen dollars."

"That's too bad. I wonder what the boy wanted. Didn't he say?"

"Not to me, though to one of the other clerks who spoke to him as he sat near the bench he said he was in need of help."

"Then it couldn't have been Hal Chester," said Mr. Martin, "for his father is able to provide for him. Besides, Hal wouldn't go away without waiting to see Ted and Jan, for they had such good times together at Cherry Farm and on Star Island.

"Hal Chester," went on Mr. Martin to the clerk, who had never been to Cherry Farm, "was a lame boy who was almost cured at the Home for Crippled Children not far from my father's house. He left there to go to his own home about the time we broke up our camp. I don't see why he would come here to see me."

"Maybe his father lost all his money and Hal wanted to see if you'd give him more," suggested Jan.

"Or maybe he wanted to get work in your store," added Ted.

"I hardly think so," remarked his father. "It is queer, though, why the boy should go away without seeing me, whoever he was. I'm sorry about the missing pocketbook. I know Hal would never do such a thing as that.

Well, it can't be helped."

"Shall I call the police?" asked the clerk.

"What for?" Mr. Martin queried.

"So they can look for this lame boy, whoever he was, and arrest him for taking that money."

"Maybe he didn't take it," said Mr. Martin.

"He must have," declared the clerk. "The pocketbook was right on the bench near him, and after he went away the pocketbook wasn't there any more. He took it all right!"

"Well, never mind about the police for a while," said the children's father. "Maybe the lame boy will come back and tell us what he wanted to see me about, and maybe he only took the pocketbook by mistake. Or some one else may have walked off with it. Don't call the police yet."

"I'm glad daddy didn't call the police," said Ted to Jan, as they went home a little later, carrying their fine, new, rubber boots.

"So'm I," agreed his sister. "Even if it was Hal I don't believe he took the money."

"No, course not! Hal wouldn't do that. Anyhow Hal wasn't hardly lame at all any more. The doctors at the Home cured him," said Ted.

"Unless maybe he got lame again in the snow," suggested Janet.

"Well, of course he might have slipped down and hurt his foot," admitted Ted. "But anyhow I guess it wasn't Hal."

Neither of the Curlytops liked to think that their former playmate would do such a thing as to take a pocketbook that did not belong to him.

Mother Martin, when told what had happened at the store that day, said she was sure it could not be Hal.

"There's one way you can find out," she said to her husband. "Write to Hal's father and ask him if he has been away from home."

"I'll do it!" agreed Mr. Martin, while Ted and Jan were out in the snow, wading in the biggest drifts they could find with their high rubber boots on. Their feet did not get a bit wet.

In a few days Mr. Martin had an answer from the letter he had sent to Mr. Chester, Hal's father. The letter was written by a friend of Mr.

Chester's who was in charge of his home and who opened all the mail. Mr.

Chester, this man wrote, was traveling with his wife and Hal, and no one knew just where they were at present.

"Then it might have been Hal, after all, who called at your office,"

said Mrs. Martin to her husband. "He may have been near here, and wanted to stop to see the children, and, not knowing where we lived, he inquired for your store. But if it was Hal I'm perfectly sure he didn't take the pocketbook."

"So am I," said Mr. Martin. "And yet we haven't found it at the store, nor was there anyone else near it while the lame boy was sitting on the bench. It's too bad! I'd like to find out who he was and what he wanted of me."

But, for the present, there seemed no way to do this. Ted and Jan wondered, too, for they would have liked to see Hal again, and they did not, even for a moment, believe he had taken the money. Hal Chester was not that kind of boy.

The Curlytops had much fun in the snow. They went riding down hill whenever they could, and made more snow men and big s...o...b..a.l.l.s. Ted and Tom Taylor talked of building a big snow house, much larger than the first one they had made.