He left Mr. Camp to watch the burning fodder, to see that sparks from the stack did no harm, and lighting his lantern he went along the line fence again.
Yes! there were the footprints that he had expected to find. But the burning stack was even farther from the fence than the first one had been—and there were no marks of feet in the soft earth on Mrs. Atterson's side of the boundary.
CHAPTER XXXIV. CLEANING UP A PROFIT
Hiram crawled through the wires, and followed the plain foot-marks back to the Dickerson sheds. He lost them there, of course, but he knew by the size of the footprints that either Sam Dickerson or his oldest son had been over to the line fence.
“And that shooting-star!” considered Hiram. “There was something peculiar about that. I wonder if there wasn't a shooting star, also, away back there at New Year's when our other stack of fodder was burned?”
He loitered about the sheds for a few moments. It appeared as though all the Dickersons were indoors. Nobody interfered with him.
Of a sudden Hiram began to sniff an odor that seemed strange about a cart-shed. At least, no wise farmer would have naphtha, or gasoline, in his outbuildings, for it would make his insurance invalid.
But that was the smell Hiram discovered. And he was not long in finding the cause of it.
Back in a dark corner, upon a beam, lay a big sling-shot—one of those that boys swing around their heads with a stone in the heel of it, and then let go one end to shoot the missile to a distance.