He looked into the dim interior of the place and for a moment did not see Cap’n Ira at all.  The ghostly face of the Queen of Sheba appeared at the opening over her manger.  Tunis was about to call when he saw the old man straining upon the lower rungs of the ladder to reach the loft to pitch down a bunch of fodder.  Queenie whinnied softly.

“Hello, Cap’n Ira!” Tunis hailed.  “What are you doing that for?” He hastened to cross the barn floor to his aid.  “Where’s Ida May that she lets you do this?”

“Ida May?” The old man repeated the name with such disgust that Tunis was all but stunned and stopped to eye Cap’n Ira amazedly.  “D’ye think she’d take a step to save me a dozen?  Or lift them lily-white hands of hers to keep Prudence from doing all the work she has to do?  I swan!”

“What do you mean?” demanded Tunis.  “You sound mighty funny, Cap’n Ira.  Hasn’t Ida May been doing all and sundry for you for months?  Is she sick?”

“I—­I don’t mean that gal,” quavered Cap’n Ira.  “I mean the real Ida May.”

He half tumbled off the ladder into Tunis Latham’s arms.  He clung to the young man tightly, and, although it was dark in the barn, Tunis could have sworn that there were tears on the old man’s cheeks.

“Don’t you know we’ve got the right Ida May with us at last—­Prudence’s niece that has come here to visit for a while and play lady?  Yes, you was fooled; we was bamboozled.  That—­that other gal, Tunis, is a real bad one, I ain’t no doubt.  She pulled the wool over your eyes and made a monkey of most everybody, it seems.  She—­”

“Who are you talking about?” cried Tunis, in his alarm almost shaking the old man.

“I’m telling you the girl you brought down here, thinking she was Ida May Bostwick, turned out to be somebody else.  I don’t know who.  Anyway, she ain’t no relation of Prudence or me.  I ain’t blaming you none, boy; she told us we musn’t blame you, for you didn’t know the truth about her, either.”

“Cap’n Ira, where is she?” demanded the younger man hoarsely.

“She ain’t here.  She’s gone.  She left four nights ago—­after Ida May had remembered what she’d done in that big store in Boston.  Oh, she admitted it—­”

“You mean to tell me she’s gone?  That you don’t know where she is?” almost shouted Tunis.

“Easy, boy!  Remember I got some feeling yet in them arms you was squeezing.  It ain’t our fault she went.  She left us in the night—­stole out with just a bundle of clothes and things.  Left, Prudence says, every enduring thing she’d got since she come here—­that we give her.”

Tunis groaned.

“Yes, she’s gone.  And she’s left that other dratted girl in her place.  I swan, Tunis, I’d just as leave have the figgerhead of the old Susan Gatskill sittin’ by our kitchen stove as to have that useless critter about.  She ain’t no good to Prudence and me—­not at all!”

CHAPTER XXIX