“That’s good deduction!” Frank declared. “Now tell us how you know that he hadn’t had anything to eat for three days.”
“Look at the shelves and you’ll discover how I know for yourselves,” Ned said, marching the boys into the back end of the cave.
“You will notice,” he went on, “that the shelf where the bread lay is covered with crumbs. That shows that he began to eat the minute his hands touched the loaf. He must have been perfectly ravenous to begin his meal while in such imminent danger of discovery. Of course, he might have dined in less than three days, but I think he’d have to be pretty hungry in order to eat with five boys likely to wake up at any moment lying around him. You see that, don’t you?”
“That’s good, too!” Jack exclaimed. “Now, how do you know whether he came down the slope to the timber line or up the slope from the valley?”
“If you notice the floor directly in front of the shelves,” Ned explained pointing, “you will see numerous pine leaves scattered about. Now, there are no pines above the cavern, so the boy crawled through the thickets below. Is that clear?”
“Clear as mud!” shouted Frank, “and suppose you have got a photograph of him so that you know that he was ragged and wore broken shoes!”
“Look at the nail sticking out of the shelf,” Ned went on, “and you’ll see several shreds of cloth hanging to it. Jack thought he was making a pretty good job on that cupboard but he left a nail sticking up, just the same. The nail tells the story of a ragged sleeve.”
“Correct!” laughed Jimmie. “Now, how are you going to make good on the broken shoes?” he continued.
“That’s the easiest part of it all,” Ned answered. “When he stood in the cool ashes close to the embers, he left imprints of wornout soles.”
The boys broke into shouts of laughter and Frank declared that he would immortalize Ned as a detective in his father’s newspaper.