should turn up we might get some
evidence against him."

"But your work?" queried Harry.

"Mr. Dewey said he'd rather pay twice the wages I'd lose than miss a
chance of tripping up Arthur Hoyt. So I gave up everything and played
what they call shadow. I was mighty awkward about it at first, but after
awhile I got so I could follow him and he never suspect. Well, among
other things, I followed him to Mr. Mortimer's and listened to their
talk under the library window. I couldn't catch it all, but I caught
enough to make out that Mr. Mortimer had no idea that Hoyt was going to
make an end of you, and that he was terribly broken up about it. But
somehow it seemed that Hoyt had mixed him up in it so that it could be
made to look as if Mortimer had really killed you."

"Oh, the villain!" exclaimed Harry.

"Isn't he, though? He made Mortimer give him four hundred thousand
dollars of the money that had been stolen from your father--"

"Did you find out how it had been stolen?" interrupted Harry, eagerly.

"Not a word about that. Then, at the last, Hoyt made him give him some
shares in a mine, and said he was going to investigate the mine. I
expected that would end the shadowing, but Mr. Dewey said I was to keep
after him if it took all the money he had in the bank, and I guess it
did just that. The long and short of it being that Mr. Dewey gave me two
hundred dollars, and I was to follow Hoyt as far as the money would take
me, and Mr. Dewey was to look after mother and Beth."

"What a friend he is!" cried Harry. "And you, too, Bill. I don't see why
I make such friends."

"Don't you?" asked Bill. "Ah, well, I do! I followed Hoyt, and there
wouldn't have been any trouble at all if it hadn't been that he stopped
all along the way to have a good time spending his stolen money. I lost
my ticket by that time. You know you can't stop off on ordinary tickets,
and it cost me two tickets before I learned how to be ready for him.
But, anyhow, he stopped so often and led me such a chase that by the
time he had been a week in San Francisco I was teetotally broke."

"And all that for me!" said Harry, gratefully.

"Get out!" cried Bill. "I was having no end of a lark. Why, I was seeing
the world, Harry, and doing some good at the same time. But I was
stumped when he left San Francisco one day for Virginia City. Then I was
fixed and no mistake. I puzzled my brains over it until I just had to
steal rides on freight trains. I only min