from Fred.

At these questions the old farmer seemed to become more enraged than
ever. He raised his pitchfork as if to use it on the cadets.

"You can't play innercent with me!" he fairly screamed. "I know you!
You shot them cows, an' I'm a-goin' to send you to state's prison fur
it!"

"It's a purty serious business--killin' a man's cattle like that,"
added Caleb Boggs, with a shake of his head. He still held his shotgun
so as to cover the two boys.

"I don't know a thing about your cows, and I certainly haven't shot at
them," answered Jack, indignantly.

"We haven't been anywhere near your cow pasture, or your cowshed,
either," said Fred. "We've been hunting up in the woods yonder. Your
man saw us."

"We got lost up there after it began to snow, and we had to camp out
all night," explained Jack. "We just found that road and were trying to
get back to Haven Point and Colby Hall."

"It ain't so! It ain't so!" snarled Elias Lacy. "You come over to my
cow paster yesterday afternoon an' shot both o' them cows and then you
run away. One o' my men seen you."

"He never did!" burst out Jack. "I tell you we weren't near your
place."

"We went out hunting with a number of other cadets, and we can prove
it!" added his cousin.

"Huh! where are them other cadets now?" demanded the old farmer.

"We got separated in the woods--they going off for some rabbits in one
direction and we going off after some other rabbits in another
direction," explained the oldest Rover boy. "I don't know where those
other cadets are now. Probably they went back to the school."

"You ain't got no right to hunt on my grounds."

"We were out in the open woods, Mr. Lacy, where we had a perfect right
to be."

"Well, we won't talk about that now," snarled the old man. "I'm a-goin'
to fix you for shootin' them cows. They was two of the best cows I had,
an' they was wuth a lot o' money."

A wordy war followed, during which the boys became almost as angry as
the old farmer. They insisted upon it that they had not been near his
farm during the afternoon of the day before, but he did not believe a
word they said.

"I'm a-goin' to have the law on you!" he cried. "I'm a-goin' to have
you arrested! An' I'll make your folks pay fur them cows!"

"Hadn't we better march 'em down to the barn?" suggested the hired man.
"Then I kin hitch up the horses and we kin take 'em down to the town
lock-up."

"Oh, Jack, don't let them lock us up!" whispered