“Yes?”
Lon chuckled. “Te he! There’s always a reg’lar bargain sale rush when the season opens, but this year it was wuss than usual. Seems as if everybody was sort o’ venison hungry; so it turns out there’s about a dozen fellers who ain’t been able to prove what you’d call a water-tight alibi. That is, they can’t bring witnesses to show that they didn’t pot the Major; and they’re bein’ joshed half out o’ their lives, some of ’em. You see, first and last, a sight o’ folks must have been prowlin’ through Marlow woods that mornin’, and none of ’em happened to think to keep a time register. The huntin’ crowd’s all tore up about it.”
“No doubt,” said Sam. If he had cared to meet Lon’s eye, he might have noted a twinkle, suggesting that the hired man had theories of his own as to the identity of the careless sportsman. But Sam avoided Lon’s gaze, and Lon chose not to make direct inquiry.
“Well, this world does see a heap of entertainin’ things, comin’ and goin’,” he observed. “Good scheme, too—keeps folks from stagnatin’ and gettin’ as dull as ditch water. Plainville’s perkin’ up a lot because of the Major and his unknown party o’ the second part, as we’d be sayin’ if you and me was lawyers.”
Here Lon spoke within the truth. The town was making a nine days’ wonder of the affair; and what the town talked, the school talked, and the club.
Sam, so far as he could, kept out of the discussions; permitted his chums to speculate as they pleased; and watched and waited for the interest in the matter to wear itself out.
Oddly enough, Peter Groche appeared to be following the same policy. He was about town as usual, doing odd jobs when work was unavoidable. No improvement was reported in his habits, but even in his cups his tongue was not loosed, so far as his feud with Major Bates and its recent development were concerned. He grumbled and made threats, to be sure, but he had been grumbling and threatening people for years; and from his incoherent growls his cronies gained no information. If he had an inkling of the secret of Marlow woods, he was keeping it to himself.
Step’s quarrel with Tom Orkney seemed to have led to nothing, even in the way of reprisals. There was no second demand upon Master Jones to recover the cap, nor was there formal notice that he should repay the owner for the seized property. In debates at the club the probability of the latter course had been stoutly upheld by Poke Green, who developed such concern in the outcome that he made a searching expedition, from which he bore back tidings that the cap was not to be found where it had fallen. Step insisted this merely went to show that Orkney, when the coast was clear, had returned to the scene and regained possession of the cap, thus avoiding loss and “saving face.”
“But he’s wearing another bonnet,” Poke pointed out.
“Oh, that’s because he’s too stuffy to admit the truth,” Step declared. “He’s as stubborn as a mule—that’s the whole case in a nutshell.”