"You don't have to make any promises for me," Mr. Cane hastened to say.
"Nobody has any greater regard for the truth than I have. I deplore this
act of vandalism more than I can say; but since you have told the truth,
I give you my word that I will help you clear the thing up. Now let's
have the rest of it."

All Sube's doubts had fled. He felt that he was now protected by the
panoply of truth, and he came out with the whole story with brutal
directness.

"When I took the tree to Guilfords' they was all tickled with it. They
thought it was a 'beaut'! But the minute _she_ saw it, she spotted it.
And she went up there to the cemetery this afternoon, and when she saw
one of her trees was gone, she came back there to the house and took on
awful--!"

"Just a minute," his father interrupted. "Who is this 'she' you keep
referring to?"

"Why, Nancy's aunt! M's Hotchkiss-Harger!"

"But what had _she_ to do with the case?" his father persisted.

"Why, I cut the tree on her cemetery lot!"

Speechless with horror, Mr. and Mrs. Cane stared helplessly at each
other, while Sube, with a feeling of unaccustomed security, laid bare
the entire situation.

"Yes," he rattled on, "she spotted it right off. And when she asked me
where I got it, I told her _you_ cut it for me." He indicated his father
by a movement of the head.

"You told her _I_ cut it for you!" shrieked the stricken parent.
"G-o-o-d Heavens!!"

It was with difficulty that Mr. Cane kept from laying violent hands on
his son as he paced up and down the room excitedly exclaiming:

"What next!--What next!"

"But we must not lose sight of the fact that Sube has told the truth,"
Mrs. Cane reminded him from time to time.

"Don't keep harping on that all the while," growled her irate husband.
"He's told the truth all right; but it's a pity he couldn't have begun
to tell it a little sooner."

After a few more turns up and down the room Mr. Cane came to a stop
before his son.

"Are you perfectly certain there hasn't been some mistake about this?"
he asked desperately. "Are you perfectly certain that the tree came from
the Harger lot?"

Sube hesitated. "Well, I ain't sure," he admitted finally. "It was
pretty dark."

"Let's be thankful for that!" exclaimed his father fervently.

"But _she_ is," Sube added after a moment.

"What do you mean by that?" asked his father suspiciously.

"Why, I mean that I didn't know _whose_ lot it was; but she went up
there t