"Do you mean to tell me that you didn't see him?" I sez. "He had horns an' a long beard, an' was about six feet high an' spouted fire, an'—"
"Do you mean the goat?" he snaps in.
"Goat!" I sez, gettin' mad. "Now don't get gay. The goat has tried to butt me fifty times since I been here, an' I guess I know him by sight; but this thing—"
He see I was in earnest, took a match, wet it, an' held it in a dark corner. "The goat was painted with that," sez he, an' I saw it all, an' I—well, I just natchly shriveled. I thought it all over. "Well, then," sez I, "what was the thing that gave the spirit call in the cellar?"
"That was my college yell," sez Ches, an' he gave it again, an' gee, but it would 'a' made an Injun's mouth water.
I was beginnin' to see that the' was a heap more in a college edication than I'd ever supposed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE DIAMOND DOT AGAIN
Next day we searched the barn an' found her just soggy with stolen stuff. We started out the news an' most of it was claimed up by the neighbors for a hundred miles around. They heroed me an' Ches right consid'able; but we didn't tell 'em about the goat. It might put the Chinamen wise, you see. They took up a purse of eighteen hundred dollars for us which had been offered in rewards one place an' another, an' we felt purty tol'able contented.