“We’ll talk about that when you’ve accomplished something, my young friend,” said Holmes, with an ugly laugh.  “It seems to me that you ought to be pretty grateful to me for not having split on you before this, though.  If I told all I know about you, I guess you’d be in the state reformatory now—­and I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be a good place for you.  Eh?”

“Stow that, you!” snarled Jake.  “I could tell a few things about you if I wanted to.  This stunt you pulled off this morning is pretty nigh to bein’ kidnappin’—­know that?”

Bessie touched Dolly on the arm.

“Oh, I do hope they keep on quarreling,” she whispered.  “That is our very best chance to escape from them, Dolly.  If they get to fighting between themselves, it’s going to be much harder for them to do anything to us.  They’ll distrust one another, and we may be able to fool them.”

But Holmes evidently saw that, too.  When he spoke again, his voice was good-natured, and he had resumed his chaffing, easy tone.

“Don’t go up in the air that way, Jake,” he said.  “I was only trying to string you a little, trying to make you mad.  I wouldn’t give you away; never fear that.  You’ll do your best, I know.  And you’ll find that you’ll get your reward, all right, too, if you make a good job of this.  We’ve got one of them.  Now we want the other, and I’ll feel safe.  So go ahead now and don’t waste any more time.  Take your bicycle and make the best time you can to that trolley station.”

“I got a right to hold her, haven’t I?” asked Jake, a little dubiously, as Bessie thought.

“Sure you have!” said Holmes, impatiently.  “I’ve told you that, haven’t I?  Weeks has got papers from the court making him her guardian, just as he did in the case of that other girl.”

“All right,” said Jake.

And he got on his bicycle and rode off, while Holmes walked back along the road, and they heard him, a minute later, cranking up his automobile, which he had evidently found and taken around by another road.

The information, unintentionally given to her by Holmes, that Weeks was her legal guardian, made Bessie shiver.  She was more afraid of the miserly old farmer than of anyone she had ever seen, and the idea of being subject to his authority for any length of time filled Bessie with dread.  He hated her already; she knew that she would be far less happy in his care than she had ever been at the Hoovers’, where, sometimes, it had seemed to her that the limit of discomfort and severe treatment had been reached.

So, if Bessie had needed anything to spur her determination to escape from the trap into which poor Dolly had so innocently led her, this accidental discovery of what her fate was to be would have been enough.  But as she pondered, she could not, for the time, see what was to be done.

“Bessie,” said Dolly, when they had been quiet for several minutes, “is that Jake Hoover as stupid as he looks!”