was temporarily forgotten.
He had slipped back into the crowd, and from that point had followed
closely all that had ensued. Laughton's confession merely filled in the
details of Bobby's surmises. It seems that Pritchard had had a violent
quarrel with his man, ending by knocking him down and stalking off
across the fields. Mad with rage, Laughton had picked himself up and
followed without even pausing long enough to get a hat. He had lost
track of his victim in the popple thicket, but had come across Kincaid's
cap, which he had appropriated. A shot from Pritchard's little rifle
apprised him of his enemy's whereabouts. The murder committed, he had
mounted a stump to spy upon the country. He had seen Kincaid and his
dog, and was just about to withdraw, when the cap was knocked from his
head by a bullet which at the same time broke the skin on his scalp.
Thinking himself discovered, he had run. Later reconnoitring carefully,
he had seen two apparently unexcited small boys climbing into a pony
cart a half-mile away and had come to the conclusion that the bullet had
been spent, and a chance shot. The idea of incriminating Mr. Kincaid had
not come to him until later.

Mr. Kincaid had at once been released. Under cover of the
congratulations, the boys made their escape.

"I don't see how you ever figured it out!" cried Johnny for the twelfth
time.

"I knew it must have hit his head unless it just grazed his cap," said
Bobby, "and when I saw that scar----"

"Gee, it was great!" gloated Johnny, "just like a book! It'll be in all
the papers to-morrow. You saved Mr. Kincaid's life, didn't you?"

"I suppose I did," said Bobby complacently.

At this moment the open hot-air register began to speak, carrying up the
voices from the rooms below. As the subject under discussion was the
closest to the boys' hearts for the moment, they drew near to listen.

"It's Mr. Kincaid himself!" breathed Bobby.

"I've been trying to catch you all the way up the street," Mr. Kincaid
was saying, "but you walk like a steam engine."

"I felt good," explained Mr. Orde. "I knew you were innocent, of course;
but it looked dark."

"Yes, it looked dark," admitted Mr. Kincaid. "Where's that youngster of
yours? He saved the day."

"I was just going to look for him. There're a few points I'd like to
clear up. If he saw all that, why didn't he say something before?"

"Don't know. But he certainly spoke to the point when he did get going.
Look here,