"On Thursday night it was, Mr. Rollins," the other went on. "Well, just then I saw the back door open, and somebody stepped out. I seen it was you, and about the queerest part of it all was that it looked to me as if you might be walkin' around in your pajamas! Do you remember comin' outdoors on that night for anything, sir?"
"I don't even remember walking around that way," replied Mr. Rollins, hastily, and looking as though he did not know whether Jo were trying to play some sort of joke on him, or not, "but go on and tell the rest. What did I do? Did you stop long enough to see?"
"Well," continued the farm hand, "I saw you go over to the old Dutch oven that hasn't been used this twenty years, and move around there a bit; but it wasn't none of my business, Mr. Rollins, and so I went along home. I guess any gentleman's got the right to go wanderin' around his own premises in the middle of the night, if he wants to, and nobody ain't got any right to complain because he don't make the trouble to put on his day clothes."
The farmer looked helplessly at Paul. Plainly his wits were in a stupor, and he could not make head or tail of what Jo was telling him.
"Can you get a pointer on to what it all means?" he asked, almost piteously.
Paul had conceived a wonderful idea that seemed to give great promise of solving the dark puzzle.
"You just as much as said that you could not remember having come out of your house that night; and that you never knew yourself to walk around out of doors in your pajamas; is that so, sir?" he asked.
"That's what I meant; and if I was put on the stand right now, I could lift my right hand, and take my solemn affidavit that I didn't do any such thing—unless by George! I was walking in my sleep!"
"That's just the point I'm trying to get at, Mr. Rollins," said Paul, quietly. "Jo, here, says he saw you as plain as anything, and yet you don't recollect doing it. See here, sir, can you ever remember walking in your sleep?"
"Why, not for a great many years," answered the farmer, somewhat confused, and yet with a new gleam of hope appearing in his expectant eyes.