ller Handsome that I had saved from the
hole in the rocks. He had an axe on his shoulder, and when he spied me
he stopped, and laughed, and laughed until I got mad.

"'Caught in yer own trap, ain't ye?' he axed me.

"'I be,' says I. 'You've got a axe, and mebby you kin help me out o'
it.'

"Well, he did. He chopped the root in a jiffy, and I was free; but,
bless you, I could 'a' done it myself with my knife in a hour, anyhow.
All the same, I was grateful to him, and we sot down on a log and
chinned for a while."

"What about?"

"He asked me what I was doing around there, and I told him that I was
thinking of looking over the swamp below the tracks a leetle, with some
idea of settin' traps there late this fall and winter, and he said as
how he wouldn't advise me to do it. He said as how I wouldn't be likely
to ketch the sort of animals I was after, and that some of the animals
might ketch me; and, as I ain't exactly a fule, I ketched onto what he
meant, and I ain't been nigh that place since. And then it turned out
afterward as I thought it would, them hoboes had a hidin' place in that
very swamp."

"Right you are, Bill!" said Nick, laughing. "Is that all the
conversation you had with Handsome?"

"Every bit of it."

"And you have never seen him since?"

"Never. Hold on; he axed me that time if I had ever mentioned the fact
of our fust meetin', and I told him I had not. He seemed pleased at
that, and he told me never to mention it. I allowed that I didn't see no
reason why I should, and he laughed at that and seemed entirely
satisfied."

"That is excellent, Bill. Now, we will get at those plans. I don't want
to lose any time."

"Would you mind telling me why you axed me all about them two meetings?"

"Not at all. When I go out into the woods in the character of Bill
Turner, I am likely at some time to run across Handsome himself. I want
to be posted, so that he won't know but what I am you. I don't want him
to catch me; see?"

"Yes. But do you suppose you kin fix yourself to look enough like me
so's he won't know the difference when he sees you?"

"Certainly."

The old man shook his head.

"I don't believe it," he said, "but maybe you can. How about the voice?
Your voice ain't no more like mine than a----"

"I can do that, too," replied Nick, exactly simulating the voice in
which the old man was speaking; and he looked around him in wonder, and
then at the detective.

"It does beat all!" he said