"I have only to foot it," burst in Hickory, taking up the sketch which the other had now completed, and glancing at it with a dubious eye. "Do you know, Byrd," he remarked in another moment, "that it strikes me Mansell did not take this roundabout road to the station?"
"Why?"
"Because it is so roundabout, and he is such a clearheaded fellow. Couldn't he have got there by some shorter cut?"
"No. Don't you remember how Orcutt cross-examined the station-master about the appearance which Mansell presented when he came upon the platform, and how that person was forced to acknowledge that, although the prisoner looked heated and exhausted, his clothes were neither muddied nor torn? Now, I did not think of it at the time, but this was done by Orcutt to prove that Mansell did take the road I have jotted down here, since any other would have carried him through swamps knee-deep with mud, or amongst stones and briers which would have put him in a state of disorder totally unfitting him for travel."
"That is so," acquiesced Hickory, after a moment's thought. "Mansell must be kept in the path. Well, well, we will see to-morrow if wit and a swift foot can make any thing out of this problem."
"Wit? Hickory, it will be wit and not a swift foot. Or luck, maybe I should call it, or rather providence. If a wagon should be going along the highway, now——"
"Let me alone for availing myself of it," laughed Hickory. "Wagon! I would jump on the back of a mule sooner than lose the chance of gaining a minute on these experts whose testimony we are to hear to-morrow. Don't lose confidence in old Hickory yet. He's the boy for this job if he isn't for any other."
And so the matter was settled.