on my part of perfect ingenuousness.

Turning back to the buggy as if I had forgotten something, and thus
accounting to any one who might be watching us, for the delay we showed
in entering the house, I said to William: "You have reasons for thinking
this man a villain, or you wouldn't be so ready to suspect him. Now what
if I should tell you that I agree with you, and that this is why I have
dragged you here this fine morning?"

"I should say you were a deuced smart woman," was his ready answer. "But
what can you do here?"

"What have we already done?" I asked. "Discovered that they have some
one in hiding in what you call an inaccessible place in the barn. But
didn't the police examine the whole place yesterday? They certainly told
me they had searched the premises thoroughly."

"Yes," he repeated, with great disdain, "they said and they said; but
they didn't climb up to the one hiding-place in sight. That old fellow
Gryce declared it wasn't worth their while; that only birds could reach
that loophole."

"Oh," I returned, somewhat taken aback; "you called his attention to it,
then?"

To which William answered with a vigorous nod and the grumbling words:

"I don't believe in the police. I think they're often in league with the
very rogues they----"

But here the necessity of approaching the house became too apparent for
further delay. Deacon Spear had shown himself at the front door, and the
sight of his astonished face twisted into a grimace of doubtful welcome
drove every other thought away than how we were to acquit ourselves in
the coming interview. Seeing that William was more or less nonplussed by
the situation, I caught him by the arm, and whispering, "Let us keep to
our first programme," led him up the walk with much the air of a
triumphant captain bringing in a recalcitrant prisoner.

My introduction under these circumstances can be imagined by those who
have followed William's awkward ways. But the Deacon, who was probably
the most surprised, if not the most disconcerted member of the group,
possessed a natural fund of conceit and self-complacency that prevented
any outward manifestation of his feelings, though I could not help
detecting a carefully suppressed antagonism in his eye when he allowed
it to fall upon William, which warned me to exercise my full arts in the
manipulation of the matter before me. I accordingly spoke first and with
all the prim courtesy such a man might naturally expect fr