"Is it yours?"
"I rather think it is, now," answered Bud, with an impudent grin! "Where did you find it?"
"Down yonder," answered Fred, pointing in a loose kind of way toward the old brick mansion.
"It was stole from me two weeks ago by a tramp, and it's funny that he lost it in this neighborhood. You can go now; I'll let you off this time, 'cause I'm so glad to get my old knife agin that was give to me two years ago."
And to the surprise and delight of Fred Sheldon, he was allowed to pass on without further questioning.
"I wonder whether I was wrong," said Fred, recalling the words of the bully; "he said he had it stolen from him two weeks ago by a tramp, and mother says that it isn't any proof that Bud is guilty because his knife was found there. Some one might have put it on the floor on purpose, and she says that just such things have been done before by persons who didn't want to be suspected."
"That agrees with what the constable says, too," added the boy, still following the same line of thought, "he is sure he has got the right man and it isn't Bud or Cyrus Sutton. Bud is bad enough to do anything of the kind, but maybe I was mistaken."
The lad was sorely puzzled, for matters were taking a shape which would have puzzled an older head than his. Everything he had seen and heard for the last few days confirmed his theory that Heyland and Sutton were the guilty ones, and now the theory was being upset in a singular fashion.
Fred was in this mental muddle when he awoke to the fact that he had passed the boundary of the wood and would soon be beyond the place where he had intended to make some observations that day.
"I don't know whether there's any use in my trying to do anything," he said, still bewildered over what he had seen and heard within the last few hours.