"You have described him to a dot," answered the other, quickly.
"Then I have the honor to inform you, sir, that the men who were lately in your employ are the identical criminals we happen to be looking for at this very minute."
"I guessed as much," dryly remarked Mr. Brady; who, it seemed to Elmer, had sized the important official at his true value, which, as Landy afterwards declared, was very much along the line of a "bag of wind."
"Please produce them, and we will see to it that they give you no further worry," remarked the officer.
"I only wish I could, sir; but the fact is, that after being caught robbing the house by one of my family, while my grown son and myself were in the fields, they set fire to things, and then ran off," the farmer replied.
"That is bad," remarked the policeman, sadly. "I had thought you might have tied the rascals up, and that we could relieve you of their care. Can you tell me in what direction they fled, sir?"
"Toward the barns, my daughter says," Mr. Brady replied.
"Evidently with the design of securing horses, and continuing their flight," said the big man in blue, as though these things were only for the practical mind of a man of long experience.
"Hardly that, sir," the farmer observed.
"How do you know?" asked Chief Benchley, frowning at the idea of a mere countryman venturing to differ with him.