ed the pawnbroker could get both rewards by taking HIM
into camp _with_ the swag. It was the blessedest idea that ever I
struck!"

"You'd change your mind," said Wilson, with irritated bluntness, "if you
knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it."

"Well," said the constable, pensively, "I had the idea that it wouldn't
work, and up to now I'm right anyway."

"Very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show. It
has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive."

The constable hadn't anything handy to hit back with, so he discharged a
discontented sniff, and said nothing.

After the night that Wilson had partly revealed his scheme at his house,
Tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of the rest of it,
but had failed. Then it occurred to him to give Roxana's smarter head a
chance at it. He made up a supposititious case, and laid it before
her. She thought it over, and delivered her verdict upon it. Tom said
to himself, "She's hit it, sure!" He thought he would test that verdict
now, and watch Wilson's face; so he said reflectively:

"Wilson, you're not a fool--a fact of recent discovery. Whatever your
scheme was, it had sense in it, Blake's opinion to the contrary
notwithstanding. I don't ask you to reveal it, but I will suppose a
case--a case which you will answer as a starting point for the real thing
I am going to come at, and that's all I want. You offered five hundred
dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the thief. We will suppose,
for argument's sake, that the first reward is _advertised_ and the second
offered by _private letter_ to pawnbrokers and--"

Blake slapped his thigh, and cried out:

"By Jackson, he's got you, Pudd'nhead! Now why couldn't I or _any_ fool
have thought of that?"

Wilson said to himself, "Anybody with a reasonably good head would have
thought of it. I am not surprised that Blake didn't detect it; I am only
surprised that Tom did. There is more to him than I supposed." He said
nothing aloud, and Tom went on:

"Very well. The thief would not suspect that there was a trap, and he
would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song, or found
it in the road, or something like that, and try to collect the reward,
and be arrested--wouldn't he?"

"Yes," said Wilson.

"I think so," said Tom. "There can't be any doubt of it. Have you ever
seen that knife?"

"No."

"Has any friend of yours?"

"Not th