Interpreting a hat as meaning any hat, Don Pedro went into the store, and took the first hat he saw in the line where Baggs and others had hung their wearing apparel.
“Mr. Blake,” said Squire Tuck, “you go along the road through the woods, rousing neighbors and making inquiries. I’ll take my team and dash down to The Harbor and rouse them there. Walter, you take the woods themselves, striking in at the left; and you, boy,” (addressing Don Pedro) “take the woods over here at the right. If you see Baggs, grip him and then shout for help, but hold him!”
Off went this police force, Uncle Boardman impressing into his constabulary force his patient old mare that chanced to be already harnessed to a red pung, and standing in a shed at the rear of the house. Squire Tuck sprang into his sleigh, eagerly caught up the reins and was about to dash off, when he said to Varney, “The counsel on the other side can join in the pursuit, if he wishes.”
Varney’s answer was a look of scorn. He went to a corner of the house that gave him a short view of this interesting chase, and there watched Uncle Boardman who urged on the old mare as if a whirlwind were after him. Aunt Lydia was anxious to have a hand in the hunt. Closing and locking the store door, securing all others, even the back door, as she passed out, lest “the pest” might get in again, she determined to search the barn. Armed with a pitchfork, she visited every corner she could think of, prudently sending her fork ahead and thoroughly “jabbing” the darkness of any nook before giving it personal examination. No enemy could be found. If one had been there, after such a reconnoissance with the pitchfork, he would have come out more dead than alive. Aunt Lydia chanced to think of one more place that might hide the fugitive. It was a little tool closet. She had laid down her weapon of search, as the door required a tug with both hands. The door yielded and flew open. And there in one corner, she spied a pair of sharp, black eyes!
“Massy!” exclaimed Aunt Lydia, turning to flee, but stumbling and falling. “Oh—h—h!” she screamed. “It’s he! Help—p!”
The next moment, she was conscious that a spring had been made over her shoulders, and out of the barn–door went Billy, the old black cat, mad to think he had been carelessly shut up twenty–four hours in that hungry place. And Aunt Lydia, who had previously thought she would be so glad to find Baggs, was just as glad now that this occupant of the tool closet was not Baggs, and went into the house thoroughly satisfied. The others still kept up the pursuit. Squire Tuck roused The Harbor after a fashion not known for years. Uncle Boardman stirred up every farmhouse on his road. Walter and Don Pedro searched the woods, but in silence. The command had been not to shout until a seizure had been made and help was needed. The snow was not very deep in the woods, and progress was not difficult.
“I don’t see anything!” thought Walter. “A fox has been along there, I guess, and those are a man’s tracks; but they are old ones.”
Through the silent forest, under the green roof of the pines, across a frozen brook, Walter vigorously pushed. He saw nothing suspicious, heard nothing. “Caw—caw!” went an occasional crow overhead, but it was not Baggs forsaking his feet and taking to wings. Walter reached at last a low but vigorous young growth of spruce. Above their tops, did he see a gray stove–pipe hat? Did not Baggs wear such a hat that day? Walter’s heart leaped within him.
“It’s Baggs’ hat!” he excitedly declared. “Now if he don’t see me and dodge me, and if I can just follow him without his noticing me a few moments, I’ll slip up to him so near that though he may dodge all he pleases, I—shall have him!”
Suddenly, the hat—was it turning? Did Baggs see Walter, possibly? Walter stooped, then rose again, only to declare that the wearer was turning to make an observation. Several times this was done, and each time Walter slightly bowed himself to escape observation. Then the hat began to move rapidly.