It was now that a sudden idea, a swift memory, struck Scout Warren.
“Say! Starrie,” he exclaimed in a low tone to his brother scout. “Do you remember our looking all over that loggers’ camp last year, the shanty back there in the woods, with the rusty grindstone trough and mountain of sawdust beside it? We found some fresh tobacco ash on the table and in one of the bunks which showed that, though the shanty was deserted in summer, somebody was using it for a shelter at night. That somebody may have been Dave Baldwin.”
“Yes, they say he has spent his time—or most of it—loafing among the dunes or in the woods,” returned Leon, well recalling the incident and how, too, he had scoffed at the boy scout for taking the trouble to read the sign story told by every article in and about the rough shanty, including the overturned trough.
“Eh! what’s that, boys?” asked one of the two policemen, catching part of the conversation.
As in duty bound they told him; and the search party turned in the direction of the log shanty.
As they surmised it was not empty. On the discolored mattress in the lower bunk left there by the lumbermen who once occupied it, was stretched the figure of a man, fast asleep. One foot emerging from a charred, torn trouser-leg which looked as if it had come into contact with fire, hung over the edge of the deal crib.
When the party filed into the shanty the sleeper started up and rubbed his eyes. At sight of the two policemen his smudged face took on a pinched pallor.
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” he cried in the bewilderment of this sudden awakening, without time to collect his senses. “So help me! I never meant to set that shed on fire!”
“You were seen hanging round there an hour before the blaze broke out, and trying to get into the house too,” challenged the elder of the policemen.