with the same curious look.

The interrogation of Tunk and the two boys began immediately. The
story of the fowl corroborated, the sugar-bush became an object of
investigation. Milldam was ten miles away, and it was quite
possible for the young man to have ridden there and back between
the hour when Tunk left him and that of sunrise when he met Mrs.
Vaughn at her door. Trove and Tunk Hosely went with the officers
down a lane to the pasture and thence into the wood by a path they
followed that night to and from the shanty. They discovered
nothing new, save one remarkable circumstance that baffled Trove
and renewed the waning suspicion of the men of the law. On almost
a straight line from bush to barn were tracks of a man that showed
plainly where they came out of the grass upon the garden soil.
Now, the strange part of it lay in this fact: the boots of Sidney
Trove exactly fitted the tracks. They followed the footprints
carefully into the meadow-grass and up to the stalk of mullen.
Near the top of it was the abandoned home of the spider and around
it were the four snares Trove had observed, now full of prey.

"Do not disturb the grass here," said Trove, "and I will prove to
you that the tracks were made before the night in question. Do you
see the four webs?"

"Yes," said the attorney..

"The tracks go under them," said Trove, "and must, therefore, have
been made before the webs. I will prove to you that the webs were
spun before two o'clock of the day before yesterday. At that hour
I saw the spinner die. See, her lair is deserted."

He broke the stalk of mullen and the cables of spider silk that led
away from it, and all inspected the empty lair. Then he told of
that deadly battle in the grass.

"But these webs might have been the work of another spider," said
the attorney.

"It matters not," Trove insisted, "for the webs were spun at least
twelve hours before the crime. One of them contains the body of a
red butterfly with starred wings. We cut the wings that day, and
Miss Vaughn put them in a book she was reading."

Paul brought the wings, which exactly fitted the tiny torso of the
butterfly. They could discern the footprints, one of which had
broken the ant's road, while another was completely covered by the
butterfly snare.

"Those tracks were made before the webs--that is evident," said the
attorney. "Do you know who made the tracks?"

"I do not," was the answer of the young man.

Tr