While she slept, in the great farm-house at the top of Butternut Hill they were still debating whether she should be arrested at once for the theft of the spoons, or whether Patty should try to influence her to confession and the restoration of the property.
It was Aunt Eunice who suggested the latter course. Uncle Reuben believed in stern justice. He said that the Coombs family was a disgrace to the town; the father was drunken and good for nothing, and the son-- His voice broke there; he had always felt that Alf Coombs was to blame for Dave's running away.
"We never heard anything really bad about Alf Coombs until--until he ran away," Anson insisted. Aunt Eunice said she thought Mrs. Coombs seemed like a good woman; and Patty tried to defend Tilly, although it _was_ difficult to explain her knitting up that ravelled mitten! She said Ruby Nutting wouldn't believe anything against Tilly, and you couldn't make her. But Uncle Reuben shook his head over that, and said he was afraid Ruby Nutting wasn't very sensible, and Ruby's father seemed to pity bad folks just as much as good ones, and to take just as much comfort doctoring them--without any pay.
But it was finally decided that Patty should tell Tilly of the proof of her guilt that had been discovered. If Patty failed to influence her, then Aunt Eunice would no longer object to her arrest.
Patty lay awake a long time that night, dreading her mission; she wished she might ask Ruby Nutting to help her, but Uncle Reuben thought it best that no one should be told. When she did sleep she dreamed a dreadful dream, in which Tilly Coombs was being pursued down the long hill, through the great snow-drifts, by an army of spoons with grotesque faces, their mouths made of the initial letter that marked the stolen spoons--O for Oliver, Grandma Barclay's maiden name; they were driving Tilly into the mill-pond, which was open as if it were summer, in spite of the January drifts, and Patty awoke with a start and a cry. But bad as was the fantastic dream, Patty said to herself that the reality was worse.
When Pelatiah opened the back door the next morning, a fine pair of chickens plucked and dressed hung upon the knob. That circumstance seemed mysterious. Why should a thief who would steal a dozen spoons have a weak conscience in the matter of a pair of chickens? Where could Tilly Coombs get a pair of chickens? Patty added these mysteries to the one about the ravelled mitten upon which Tilly had knit and knit and yet worn it unmended, and felt as bewildered as she did when Anson made her listen to something out of the rebus corner of the _Butternut Weekly Voice_. But Uncle Reuben still insisted that it was a clear case; the thief had restored the chickens in order to stifle suspicion about the spoons. As to how the thief became possessed of the chickens, he "didn't think it would trouble Coombses to rob hen-roosts."