"Well, we've shown him the chart once or twice, but he's so thick he can't make head or tail of it. Why, the poor, benighted idiot asked us once if this was the place where was that dead tree that shows on the chart."
"And what did you say?"
"Just what I told you. The tree had either blown down, rotted away or been struck by lightning."
The earnestness with which the unfortunate victim of an hallucination sought to explain away everything was pitiable.
"That stopped his objections, I suppose," said Tom.
"Oh, yes. He said nothing more. Seth said that if he heard any more rubbish from him, he'd shut him up effectually and we have heard no more from him on the subject. That's the reason we think that Rufus is a little off. He gets such queer ideas in his head."
"Oh, well, we are all liable to get our ideas mixed up a bit sometimes," was Tom's diplomatic reply.
But as Stapleton turned back into the case, his heart sank. The man was even crazier than he had thought. He actually thought that by detaining the boys he was doing them a good turn.
Through the gloom that obsessed his spirits, only one ray of light shone and that was this:
From what Stapleton had said the boy had deduced one clear fact. Rufus the negro was, apparently, the only one of the trio in the full possession of his senses. In an emergency they would have to trust to the black man to help them.