ns.

Tim's eyes twinkled.

It was evening of the following day, and Colonel Witham sat on the porch
of the Half Way House, smoking his pipe. It had been a puzzling day for
him, and he was thinking it over. Going through the mill, along in the
afternoon, he had come upon an extraordinary looking object in the
garret--an old wash-boiler, inverted, with a resined cord running from
the bottom of it up to a beam. And near by lay a sort of bow, strung
with horse-hair.

What on earth could that be, and how had it come there? Colonel Witham,
at first, had thought it might be some sort of an infernal machine, put
there to destroy the mill. But he had investigated, cautiously, and
demonstrated its harmlessness. And about the floor were a few half
burned matches. Somebody had been in the mill. A faint perception began
to dawn upon him, as the day passed, that it might have been the boys;
but he couldn't wholly figure it out, and it bothered him not a little.

He thought of notifying the police--but he didn't want them hunting
about the mill--or anybody else. The best thing, he decided, was to keep
quiet, and watch out sharper than ever.

He was not in a friendly mood, therefore, when, gazing down the road, he
espied Henry Burns approaching on a bicycle, followed closely by Jack
Harvey and Tim Reardon. Moreover, his suspicions were aroused. He was
somewhat surprised, however, when the boys dismounted at a little
distance, leaned their wheels against some bushes and approached the
porch.

Greater still was the colonel's surprise--indeed, he was fairly taken
aback--when Henry Burns, having bade him good-evening, broached his
subject abruptly, without any preliminaries.

"Colonel Witham," said Henry Burns, coolly, "we were up in the mill last
night."

The colonel's eyes stuck out, and he glared at Henry Burns with mingled
astonishment and wrath.

"Eh, what's that?" he exclaimed, "you were in my mill! Why, you young
rascals, don't you know I could have you all arrested as burglars?"

"No," replied Henry Burns, "we didn't go to take anything of yours. We
were after some papers that belonged to John Ellison's father. We
weren't going to keep them either, if we found them; just turn them over
to Lawyer Estes."

"Well, then, it was trespass," cried Colonel Witham, wrathfully. "Who
told you there were papers in the mill. Lawyer Estes didn't--he knows
better."

"No," replied Henry Burns, "but you told the fortune-teller so."