uessing good and hard," said Bristles. "Was that your
dad's pocketbook, his watch, the piano, or what could it be?"

"A hat," explained Fred.

Bristles and Colon fairly gasped upon hearing this.

"D'ye mean to tell us, Fred, that a desperate burglar would take all the
chances of breaking into a house where he might get shot, just to steal a
hat!" Colon demanded, as though suspecting they were being made the
victims of a joke, although as a rule Fred seldom allowed himself to
attempt anything of the kind.

"Sometimes even a hat may be a mighty important thing, if you stop to
think of it, fellows," he informed them.

"Great smoke! Fred, do you mean that hat?" exclaimed Bristles, suddenly
remembering something.

"The one we picked up on the battlefield!" added Colon, helplessly.

"That's the one I mean," they were told by the other, with a positive
tone that could not be mistaken. "When I got home I tossed it onto the
hall table. It wasn't there this morning, and I asked the girl, and
everyone about the house if they'd seen it, but nobody had. And what was
plain evidence of a robbery was the fact that a window was found open in
the sitting-room, which my dad says he is sure he shut and locked before
he went to bed."

"It was Cooney Jimmerson, of course?" suggested Colon.

"He's always been too clever with his fingers," Bristles gave as his
opinion. "Maybe you remember, Colon, because it was before Fred's time
here, how Cooney used to sneak into the coat-rooms at school, and go
through the pockets of our reefers looking for pennies or tops or any old
thing. He got in a peck of trouble on account of his sly tricks. If
anybody could turn the catch of a window, and crawl in, I'd put it up to
him."

"But Fred, how would he know you'd found his old hat?" asked Colon.

"We'll have to guess at that," he was told. "Look back, Colon, and
you'll be likely to remember that several times we heard a rustling sound
in that clump of bushes, while we were standing there talking, after
finding the hat."

"Yes, and you thought it might be only a rabbit, or a chipmunk, or
something like that," assented Colon, promptly.

"Now that the hat we were keeping as evidence has been stolen from my
house," Fred continued, "I'm more than sure that must have been Cooney
himself. He'd missed his hat, and afraid that we might find it, he came
creeping back to get into that bunch of brush, where he could hear every
word we spoke.