"Well, I am, for a fact," the visitor replied, nodding his head to emphasize his remark.
"Anything happened to make you feel better?" suggested Fred; "has there been another mysterious robbery over at your aunt's house, so that she can understand you didn't do it, because you were far away this time?"
Bristles heaved a big sigh.
"Huh! no such good luck as that, Fred," he remarked; "I only wish it was that way. P'raps it will be, just as you say. But an idea hit me in the night, when I was a-lyin' there, trying to get to sleep again. I don't like to be awake when it's only three o'clock, you know. Makes me feel bad in the morning. And I was tired as all get-out last night, after what we did yesterday up at camp and on the way down, when we beat Buck's bunch so neat in that race."
"Hold on, stick to the text," remarked Fred; "you're the greatest fellow to ramble all over the lot when you start to telling anything. Now you said you had run across an idea; let's hear it, then; for I reckon it must have something to do with your trouble, Bristles?"
The other actually grinned, showing that he was feeling more hopeful on this bright, sunshiny, summer morning, at any rate.
"That's right, Fred, it had a whole lot to do with it!" he burst out. "Say, I've discovered who's been cribbing all those pretty little stones up at my aunt's!"
"You don't mean it?" cried Fred, really taken aback.
"Yes, I do, now," went on the excited Bristles; "and you couldn't guess it in a year of Sundays. It just seemed to pop into my head while I was lying there on my back, grunting because I couldn't get to sleep, or take my mind off Aunt Alicia and her queer old house."
"Now, don't stop like that, and chuckle, Bristles; but go on telling, if you want me to sit here and listen." Fred prodded his chum with his finger as he said this, to bring him to his senses.