ms with the Deacon." At which insinuation
I attempted to smile, but only succeeded in forcing a grim twitch or two
to my lips, for at that moment and before I could take one step towards
the house, a couple of pigeons rose up from behind the house and flew
away in a bee-line for Mother Jane's cottage.

"Ha!" thought I; "my instinct has not failed me. Behold the link between
this house and the hut in which those tokens of crime were found," and
was for the moment so overwhelmed by this confirmation of my secret
suspicions, that I quite forgot to advance, and stood stupidly staring
after these birds now rapidly disappearing in the distance.

William's voice aroused me.

"Come!" he cried. "Don't be bashful. I don't think much of Deacon Spear
myself, but if _you_ do--Why, what's the matter now?" he asked, with a
startled look at me. I had clutched him by the arm.

"Nothing," I protested, "only--you see that window over there? The one
in the gable of the barn, I mean. I thought I saw a hand thrust out,--a
white hand that dropped crumbs. Have they a child on this place?"

"No," replied William, in an odd voice and with an odd look toward the
window I have mentioned. "Did you really see a hand there?"

"I most certainly did," I answered, with an air of indifference I was
far from feeling. "Some one is up in the hay-loft; perhaps it is Deacon
Spear himself. If so, he will have to come down, for now that we are
here, I am determined you shall do your duty."

"Deacon Spear can't climb that hay-loft," was the perplexed answer I
received in a hardly intelligible mutter. "I've been there, and I know;
only a boy or a very agile young man could crawl along the beams that
lead to that window. It is the one hiding-place in this part of the
lane; and when I said yesterday that if I were the police and had the
same search to make which they have, I knew where I would look, I meant
that same little platform up behind the hay, whose only outlook is
yonder window. But I forgot that _you_ have no suspicions of our good
Deacon; that _you_ are here on quite a different errand than to search
for Silly Rufus. So come along and----"

But I resisted his impelling hand. He was so much in earnest and so
evidently under the excitement of what appeared to him a great
discovery, that he seemed quite another man. This made my own suspicions
less hazardous, and also added to the situation fresh difficulties which
could only be met by an appearance