He was beginning to grow defiant now, feeling that the doctor had no real evidence against him.
"Don't you think that a trip to some more lively spot for the rest of the summer would be advisable, Herring?" the doctor suddenly asked, looking quizzically at him. "Better for all concerned, perhaps? You don't altogether like this camp life, do you, Herring?"
"Oh, I am satisfied with it," said Herring, putting on an air of braggadocio, seeing that the doctor was giving him a loophole by which to get out. "I don't see that I need—-" but then he stopped, seeing a look in the doctor's face like a danger signal.
"You think on the whole that it might be as well to go somewhere else for a few weeks?"
The doctor got up, and Herring took the hint and went out, saying nothing further upon the subject.
By the time Percival and the others had returned he was packing up, and when Jack and Dick came back from Riverton he had gone, and Merritt and one or two others had gone with him.
Shortly after this Jack and Percival, while in Riverton one day, came across Gabrielle, the former nurse maid for Mrs. Van der Donk, and Percival, recognizing her said shortly:
"How do you do? Will you tell me how you happened to put that watch in my friend's pocket the night of the fire at your employer's house?"
"What you say?" asked the girl in the high key customary with her.
"I do not know you, I have not meet you before."
"But you know me," said Jack. "You remember the watch with the diamonds on the case that your friend gave you? You were talking about it on the banks of the kill one afternoon and said you had lost it. You did not lose it, did you? Didn't you put it in my pocket?"