id that they might just as well
take it, too."

"Who was this man?" said Abner.

"They will not tell who he was."

"Why not?"

"Now, Abner," cried Ward, "why not, indeed! Because there never was any
such man. The story is a lie out of the whole cloth. The proof is all
dead against them."

"Well," replied my uncle, "what circumstantial evidence proves, depends
a good deal on how you get started. It is a somewhat dangerous road to
the truth, because all the sign-boards have a curious trick of pointing
in the direction that you are going. Now a man will never realize this
unless he turns around and starts back, then he will see, to his
amazement, that the signboards have also turned. But as long as his
face is set one certain way, it is of no use to talk to him, he won't
listen to you; and if he sees you going the other way, he will call you
a fool!"

"There is only one way in this case," said Ward.

"There are always two ways in every case," replied Abner, "that the
suspected person is either guilty or innocent. You have started upon the
theory that Shifflet and Twiggs are guilty. Now, suppose you had started
the other way, what then?"

"Well," said Ward, "what then?"

"This, then," continued Abner. "You stop Shifflet and Twiggs on the road
with Daniel Coopman's cattle, and they tell you that a man has hired
them to drive this drove into Maryland. You believe that and start out
to find the man. You find Bowers!"

Bowers went deadly white.

"For God's sake, Abner!" he said.

But my uncle was merciless and he drove in the conclusion.

"What then?"

There was no answer, but the faces of the men about my uncle turned
toward the man whose trembling hands fingered the rope that he was
preparing for another.

"But the things we found, Abner?" said Ward.

"What do they prove," continued my uncle, "now that the signboards are
turned? That somebody killed Daniel Coopman and drove off his cattle,
and afterward destroyed the body and the wagon in which it was hauled
away. . . . But who did that? . . . The men who were driving Daniel
Coopman's cattle, or the man who was riding Daniel Coopman's horse, and
carrying Daniel Coopman's watch in his pocket?"

Ward's face was a study in expression.

"Ah!" cried Abner. "Remember that the signboards have turned about. And
what do they point to if we read them on the way we are going now? The
man who killed Coopman was afraid to be found with the cattle, so he
hired Twi