"Is that yours?" he asked.
"Yes," said Nick, taking it up and turning it in his fingers, "it's sure mine. Where'd you pick it up? Last time I see it 'twas on the shelf at home in my shack. Been lying thar for months. Too good ter throw away, not good enough ter smoke. How in thunder did it get here?"
"It was found in one of our canoes," explained Kiddie. "You are supposed to have dropped it there and forgotten it."
"Never bin in one o' your canoes in all my life," Nick declared.
"Ever been in this room before?" pursued Kiddie.
"Never," Nick denied; "never been inside the door."
"Show me the soles of your boots," said Kiddie.
Nick lifted his feet for inspection. Kiddie looked at the smooth soles inquiringly, nodded in satisfaction, and then leant forward and carefully picked a thread of yellow worsted from Undrell's striped vest.
"How do you explain," he went on, "that we found a thread of this very same yellow wool caught in the glass of that broken window? How do you account for a thread of the same stuff bein' found fixed round one of the claws of my dead hound?"
"Your dead hound!" repeated Nick, in genuine surprise. "Dead, d'ye say? D'ye mean he killed it—shot it? My, I'm glad we captured him—real glad, I am."