I hunted and hunted all about there, but it was no use. The faces of Will and George grew as blank as my own as I told them, and we joined the fishing party of a dozen or so boys with a heavy sinking at our hearts, and many doubts as to what might be the outcome of our clever joke on the old Deacon.
Early in the afternoon we saw a spring-wagon working its way along under the willows where we were fishing. Two men were in it, one of whom, a stumpy, freckle-faced Irishman, I recognized as Deacon Dodd's new hired man. The other was a neighbor of ours, and it was not until he had beckoned George and Will and myself a little apart from the other boys that I remembered all of a sudden, with a great addition to the weight on my mind, that he was the deputy-sheriff.
"Yis, sor, thim's the very b'ys," said the Irishman, with a very positive nod of his head at us.
The deputy-sheriff looked puzzled.
"Why, my man," he said, "you don't mean it's these boys you're after?"
"It's jist these same I'm maning—the very wans me own eyes saw shtalin' away the Daacon's calf."
At this we burst out laughing, and gave the deputy-sheriff an account of our frolic of the night before. Mike listened unmoved, simply asking, as we finished:
"But wheriver is the Daacon's baste, thin?"
This we could not answer. The deputy-sheriff whispered with the Irishman, seeming to intercede for us; but Mike only answered, doggedly: