Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/54

 46   perfectly about getting back the silver for the church, and about Tish's Italian, and then at last, finding us good listeners, he told about the girl.

"Is it—er—money?" Aggie breathlessly asked.

"Well—partly," he admitted. "I don't make much, of course."

"But with the rewards and all that?" asked Aggie, who'd been sitting forward with her mouth open.

"Rewards? Oh, well, of course I get something that way. But it isn't steady money. A chap can't very well go to a girl's father and tell him that, if somebody murders somebody else and escapes and he captures him, he can pay the rent and the grocery bill."

"Is she pretty?" asked Aggie.

"Beautiful!" His tone was ardent enough to please even Aggie.

He sat without speaking for a time, and none of us liked to interrupt him. Outside it had stopped raining, and the moon was coming up over the Camel's Back. We could hear Modestine stirring in the thicket and a watery ray of moonlight came into the cave and threw our shadows against the wall.

"If only," said Sheriff Muldoon