e table, and dropped down in the rocker.

"Well, I am, for a fact," the visitor replied, nodding his head to
emphasize his remark.

"Anything happened to make you feel better?" suggested Fred; "has there
been another mysterious robbery over at your aunt's house, so that she
can understand you didn't do it, because you were far away this time?"

Bristles heaved a big sigh.

"Huh! no such good luck as that, Fred," he remarked; "I only wish it
was that way. P'raps it will be, just as you say. But an idea hit me in
the night, when I was a-lyin' there, trying to get to sleep again. I
don't like to be awake when it's only three o'clock, you know. Makes me
feel bad in the morning. And I was tired as all get-out last night,
after what we did yesterday up at camp and on the way down, when we
beat Buck's bunch so neat in that race."

"Hold on, stick to the text," remarked Fred; "you're the greatest
fellow to ramble all over the lot when you start to telling anything.
Now you said you had run across an idea; let's hear it, then; for I
reckon it must have something to do with your trouble, Bristles?"

The other actually grinned, showing that he was feeling more hopeful on
this bright, sunshiny, summer morning, at any rate.

"That's right, Fred, it had a whole lot to do with it!" he burst out.
"Say, I've discovered who's been cribbing all those pretty little
stones up at my aunt's!"

"You don't mean it?" cried Fred, really taken aback.

"Yes, I do, now," went on the excited Bristles; "and you couldn't guess
it in a year of Sundays. It just seemed to pop into my head while I was
lying there on my back, grunting because I couldn't get to sleep, or
take my mind off Aunt Alicia and her queer old house."

"Now, don't stop like that, and chuckle, Bristles; but go on telling,
if you want me to sit here and listen." Fred prodded his chum with his
finger as he said this, to bring him to his senses.

"It's playing a mean game on the old lady, too, to take those opals so
slick, and give her all that bad feeling; but if she _will_ keep such
tricky pets, why she's got to pay for it, that's all, Fred."

"Pets!" burst out the other.

"Sure thing," laughed Bristles; "that wise old crow's the guilty
thief!"

"The black raven that she brought over from England, you mean?" Fred
went on, rather staggered himself by what Bristles had said, and yet
discovering an element of possible truth in it.

"Yes, the old chap that cocks his head o