this fire."

The two men sat down in the shade and Charley told his chief all that had
happened to him since the two had parted on the preceding evening. When
he showed the forester the marks in the clay, the forester was elated.

"He's a pretty clever rascal who doesn't trip himself up somewhere," he
said. "It's an easy guess who your three fire bugs are. I have a very
great suspicion that the thumb-prints in that ball of clay I took from
your secret camp will match up with some of these marks, and that both
sets of prints will correspond with the marks on the thumbs of one Bill
Collins, though I didn't know that he was in the neighborhood at present.
And it's just as safe a bet that another set of those marks will match the
ends of Lumley's thumbs. If only he had been as considerate as his friend
Collins, and left his calling cards behind him, we'd have a complete case
against him."

"We have," cried Charley, leaping to his feet in sudden excitement.
"Lumley left his thumb-prints in the putty he stuck in his window-sash. I
never thought of them until this moment."

"Excellent!" cried the forester. "I suspect we can find the duplicates for
this third set of prints only when we lay hands on Henry Collins. But I
have a strong suspicion we'll have a chance to make that comparison very
soon."

"How?" asked Charley eagerly. "What do you mean? Have the police made any
arrests?"

"I don't know," replied the forester. "But this is the situation. Lumley
will never dare hang around in the forest, for he will know that every
man in the Forest Service is looking for him. Then, too, he can't have
much food with him."

"Only what he took from me, I suspect."

"That makes it certain that he must leave the forest soon. It's a good
many miles from the lumber camp to this neighborhood, so the three
fugitives must be traveling in this direction. If they keep on for fifteen
or twenty miles further, they will come out of the mountains near
Pleasantville or Maple Gap. They can board a train at either place. The
state police already are watching both stations. If Lumley and his fellows
went straight on after they started the fires, and Goodness knows they
wouldn't hang around here, they could reach the railroad in six or eight
hours. That means they would be there by this time. There is a train that
reaches Pleasantville about eleven o'clock. They would have time to make
it. I should not be at all surprised, when I get back to the