"I want to let your folks know what you done for us this night, boys," he said, "and p'raps you might accept some little present later on, just as a sort of remembrance, you know."
"How did the fire start, sir?" asked Paul.
"That's what bothers me a heap," replied the farmer.
"Then you don't know?" continued the scoutmaster, who felt a reasonable curiosity to learn what he could of the matter while on the spot.
"It's all a blank mystery to me, for a fact," continued the farmer, whose name the boys had learned was Mr. Rollins. "My barn and stable was all one, you see. My man has been away all day, and I had to look after the stock myself, but I finished just as dark set in, before supper, in fact, so there ain't been so much as a lighted lantern around here tonight."
"Perhaps, when you lighted your pipe you may have thrown the match away, and it fell in the hay?" suggested Paul.
"If it had, the fire'd started long ago; fact is, I'd a seen it right away. And to settle that right in the start let me say I don't smoke at all, and didn't have any occasion to strike a single match while out here."
Of course this statement of the farmer seemed to settle all idea of his having been in any way responsible for the burning of the barn.
"It looks like a big black mystery, all right," declared Fritz, who always liked to come upon some knotty problem that needed solving.
"Have you any idea that the fire could have been the work of tramps?" Paul went on to ask.