"Guess you won't need any more help," said Mr. Keppler, regaining his breath. "How'd she start?"
"Why, when I thought it was the barn, I said to myself that lazy good-for-nothing lame Phil's been smoking," replied Mr. Peabody. "But I don't know how he could set the corncribs afire."
"Where is he now?" cried Betty, remembering the man's affliction. "He couldn't run—perhaps he tried to sleep in the wagon and is burned."
"No, he isn't," said Phil behind her.
He had been watching the fire from the safe vantage point of a boulder in the apple orchard, he admitted when cross-questioned. Yes, the flames had awakened him in the barn where he slept. No, he couldn't guess how they had started unless it could have been spontaneous combustion from the oiled rags he had noticed packed tightly in a corner of the wagon shed that afternoon.
"Spontaneous combustion!" ejaculated Mr. Peabody angrily. "If you know that much, why couldn't you drop me a word, or take away the rags?"
The lame man looked at him with irritating intentness.
"I thought you might wring my neck if I did," he said.
"I don't know whether Phil's a fool or not," confided Bob to Betty the next morning; "but he has old Peabody guessing, that's sure. He was quoting Shakespeare to him at the pump this morning."
Betty lost little time in speculation concerning Phil, for another worry claimed her attention.