"Is it?" cried Bart, in profound admiration of the old bookworm's system. "Professor, you are the wisest man and one of the best men I ever met!"
CHAPTER XVIII
A DUMB FRIEND
At three o'clock that afternoon Bart Stirling sat down to rest at the side of a dusty country road, pretty well tired out, and about ready to return to Pleasantville.
When old Professor Cunningham gave him the names Buck and Hank Tolliver, Bart was positive that the same covered the identity of the two men who had been at the Sharp Corner with Lem Wacker.
Bart had started at once for Millville. His first intention was to get a conveyance at the livery stable, his first impulse to solicit the co-operation of the town police.
While discussing these points mentally, however, a farmer driving west came down the road. He had a good team, said he was passing through Millville, seemed glad to give Bart a lift, and so it was that the young express agent found himself on the solitary lookout there, two hours before noon.
He experienced no difficulty whatever in finding out all about the Tollivers inside of twenty minutes after his arrival.
They were the last members of a shiftless, indolent family who had lived on the edge of Millville for twenty years.