"Where?" asked the astonished Dave, anxious to lay hold of any clue to a serious mystery.
"Up there."
He pointed at the top of the clothes-press. The press was not a tall one. Dave standing on tiptoe could reach to its top, and he now laid the watch there.
"Is that right?" asked Dave.
The keeper nodded his head, and then closed his eyes, his face wearing a satisfied expression foreign to it all through his sickness.
"Is not that queer?" whispered Dave. "Some mystery that is too deep for me."
He beckoned Thomas and Bart out of the room, and then followed them downstairs.
"Now, how do you explain that?" asked Dave, as the three clustered about the stove, whose heat that day was acceptable, for the air was chilly and the wind was a prophet of storm.
"Don't know," said Thomas.
"I'd give this old pocket-book full of silver," declared Dave, "to have that thing cleared up. It takes a load off my mind, I tell you. The old man has been harping on the fact that I took something, and he has been looking toward that old clothes-press in such a strange way. I didn't know anything was up there. Did you see how he acted, smiled about it?"