wished his benefactor a good morning and jumped on the bank, with the last jest on his lips. We were just in time. Codling, our fat policeman, was there, and he took up Davie on the spot, warning him that all he might say would be used against him. 

 "I don't care," said Davie.  "I will tell all I know, and that's little enough—more shame to me for going after trouts with poor Harry so near his end." 

 The village men scattered to search the wood and the waterside, finding nothing but sundry "stances" where the angler had stood while fishing, and the nook in which he had slept among the bracken, with the marks of our feet as we went toward him from the stile. 

 We started off home without making any more discoveries, and as we went Elsie pointed up to the firs above our heads. 

 "What sort of leaves were in the cart when we saw it?" she asked me suddenly. 

 "Some kind of big, broad leaves—oak, I think," I answered, for indeed, I had paid no very great attention. 

 "Well," she said, "will you please tell me where big, broad leaves came from in Spar hawk Wood?" 

 And then I saw how true it was—the thing that she meant to say. There were only tall Scotch firs in the Sparhawk, and not a low-growing tree or one with a leaf upon it! Only pine needles and fir cones. 

 "We will come back in the morning," I said to Elsie, "and see what we can find. Piebald Bess never came back this road!" 

 "As, indeed, we might have seen before this by the single tracks," she added. And, indeed, it was no great discovery after all. But old Codling and the village men just took it for granted, and as many of the farmers and even my father came in conveyances there was soon no lack of tracks all over the road. 

 But Elsie and I kept our counsel and made tryst for the morning. It is terrible to get bitten with the wanting to find out things. The more you know the more you want to know. 

 Next morning it was still and clear, with a promise of heat. Elsie had asked Nance Edgar if she could go, but I had dispensed with asking my father. Indeed, so long as he was assured that I was the cleverest boy in school, and at the top of the topmost class, he did not trouble much about me, having other things on his mind. And Mr. Mustard was always ready to tell him all that.  

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