"It would be too bad, now," said Ted, "if they managed to haul both of them up before we could get Hen in hand, and hear hith thory of what happened."
"That's a fact," added Lil Artha. "We know the Chief, and that he'd take Hen back to town just like he was a real criminal. No matter what excuse the boy'd try to give, the Chief wouldn't listen, leaving all that for the Justice of the Peace before whom he'd take his prisoners. Boys, we've just got to find Hen first; that's all there is to it."
That seemed to be the consensus of opinion among them. By degrees they had come to believe that Hen Condit must be under a spell, to have acted as he did. Nothing else would explain the mystery, for Hen had always been reckoned a mild, inoffensive sort of fellow, one of the last boys in Hickory Ridge to do anything so terrible as commit a robbery.
"That's just what it is!" declared Toby, as they again talked it all over in hopes of getting a better conception of the truth, "the man who's got Hen must be one of those terrible hypnotists you read about. I saw one down in the city last summer at a show, and he made fellows do the most ridiculous things anybody ever heard tell of."
"Such as what?" asked Lil Artha, looking as though he might be skeptical.
"Why, one boy thought he was a goat, and ran all around on his hands and feet, hunting for tin cans and old shoes to eat. Another believed he was a dog baying at the full moon, and I nearly took a fit listening to him whoop. Then there was a third fellow who believed he was made of iron, so he stretched himself from one chair to another, and three men stood right in his middle; and he didn't break, either. Say, it was the greatest sight you ever saw."
"Fakes, all rank fakes!" snorted Lil Artha; "every one of those boys was a confederate of the impostor. You notice they never come to small places where everybody knows everybody else, but show in cities, where a new audience comes each night. I'd like to see a circus like that, just to laugh; but you couldn't get me to believe in hypnotism worth a cent."
"Well, then," demanded Toby, "what do you think this man's got on Hen that he's made him do whatever he wanted, tell us that, if you can?"
"I don't know," replied Lil Artha, promptly.
"See?" cried Toby, exultantly, "he backs down right away."