“I can easy tell you my side of it,” said the farmer. “Jud and me was something like chums when we was boys. When he come back here a spell ago he heard I was storing something in the cellar under the east wing of the house. He told me he wanted to get into that cellar for something.
“So I met him up there that night. I opened the cellar door and we went down. I kept a lantern there. Then I found out he wanted to go farther. There’s a hatch there in the floor of the old doctor’s workshop—”
“A trap door?”
“Yes.”
“And you let him up there?”
“Naw, I didn’t. He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted in the old doctor’s offices. I stayed there a while with him–us argyfyin’ all the time. Then we come away.”
“And the other time?”
“On Saturday night? I caught him trying to break in at the cellar door. I warned him not to try no more tricks, and I told him if he did I’d make it public. We ain’t been right good friends since,” declared Mr. Pritchett, chewing reflectively on a stalk of grass.
“And you don’t know what it’s all about?” demanded Lyddy, disappointedly.
“No more’n you do,” declared Mr. Pritchett; “or as much.”