“Boy!” said he, in still greater amazement, “are you a robber?”
“Like enough I am,” muttered Jack, quite willing that he should take that view of the case.
“Boy!” repeated Peternot, with awful severity, “you’ve stolen this money, and it’s my duty to have you arrested. I am a justice of the peace.” Jack changed countenance at that.
“I’ve stolen it about as much as I stole Mr. Chatford’s horse and buggy once, which you were so sure of, when they were all the while standing under the shed at the Basin, just where Mr. Chatford left them.”
“Then how did you come by so much money?”
“If you must know, I found it in this log,” said Jack, with a sudden determination to tell the plain truth, and stand or fall by it.
“How do I know but what you stole it and hid it here, so you could pretend you’d found it?”
Jack was glad now that he had not removed the trunk.
“If you can’t see by the look of this silver that it’s been hid away here longer than I’ve been in the town,” he replied, “you can just go into the log and find the trunk, that you’ll say has been there about as many years as I am old, that’s all!”