“It had caused him to stop. He knew somebody had thrown it. He told them.”
“But you had been coming along the road far behind with others. How could it have been you who threw the stone? My dear fellow, you must have given yourself away by your actions.”
“Not at all. But I had been at the tail-end of the party when I dropped off and cut across through a lane to reach the road by which I knew they would return to town. Two of the fellows saw me sit down beside the road as if to fix my shoe. They came up while I was there with the gang around Merriwell, and one of them spoke up and asked me how the dickens I got ahead of them.”
“Bad!” commented Packard. “Dead give away. Put Merriwell on the scent.”
“No; Hodge.”
“The devil!”
“Just as bad! He went back there that very night with a lantern and found my handkerchief which I had dropped on the spot where I stood when I threw the stone.”
Packard nodded.
“A man who throws a stone at an enemy always makes a fool of himself by dropping a handkerchief or doing some other foolish thing to give himself away. I wonder why that is? I don’t understand it.”
“Well, Hodge demanded my exposure to the fac.,” said Defarge.