s a fresh air
fiend, you know. Some of the talk will leak out and it may give us a
clew."

"All right," assented Tom, after a moment's thought. "Go ahead. I
don't believe it will amount to anything, though. Then I can go on
with my drug store end of it," and he briefly explained to George where
he had been headed for when the interruption came.

"Shall we all go?" asked Bert. "Won't it look sort of queer for three
of us to be hanging around the doctor's house?"

"It will," assented Jack, "and, therefore, we won't all hang out in the
same place. I'll get under the big office window; Bert, you can take
the window on the other side, and George will guard the front door."

"Guard the front door? For what?"

"Well, just sort of drape yourself around it," suggested Jack, who had
assumed the direction of matters. "Maybe you can overhear something as
Sam and Appleby come out. I don't just like this sort of thing," he
added, "but the end justifies the means, I think."

Tom nodded gravely. The stain against his name had affected him more
than he cared to admit. The three lads went out and Tom sat down in
moody silence to await their return. They were not long away, and came
back together, rather silent.

"Well?" asked Tom questioningly, as his chums entered.

"Nothing much," answered Jack in despondent tones. "We were almost too
late, but I did manage to overhear something. Sam and Appleby came out
a short time after we got there. It seems that the farmer caught Sam
sneaking around his barn, and as he's been suspicious, and on the watch
ever since the poisoning of his horses, he rushed out in a hurry and
collared him."

"What explanation did Sam make?" asked Tom.

"All I could hear was that it was a mistake, and that he wandered off
the road in the darkness."

"The same as we did when we got in the corn," said Tom. "So that's all
there was to it?"

"Except that Appleby was ripping mad, and threatened to have the next
school lad arrested whom he found on his property. We'll have to make
a new course for cross-country runs after this I guess, for we used to
run across his big meadow."

"Yes," assented Tom. "Well, I didn't think it would amount to
anything. I'm much obliged, though."

"You wait!" insisted Jack. "This isn't the bottom of it yet, not by a
long shot."

"What do you mean?" asked Tom curiously.

"I mean that Sam isn't such a loon as to get off the road on to
Appleby's land just by