"You haven't the bouquet of an inebriate, son. You stepped along like Hoky, my pal, and that's why I whistled; and you warbled the answer like a mockingbird. Now listen to me! You've been up to something, so don't tell me again that you're taking a little before breakfast stroll to Portsmouth to work up an appetite. In the first place, have you seen a man about your size along the road anywhere?" "Not a soul!" declared Archie solemnly. "Mighty queer Hoky doesn't turn up! I warned the beggar against these seaside villas; they're all outfitted with fancy burglar alarms that make a deuce of a row when you step on the wire. Electricity is the bane of the craft; you light a wire that rings a gong loud enough to wake the dead and then some chap jumps out of bed and turns on all the lights in the house and very likely opens up with a gun before you can say Jerusalem. But Hoky thought he knew better." Archie clutched at the stone fence against which his captor had pushed him and his breath came in long gasps. "You mean," he faltered, "that you fear your friend has been shot!" "That, my dear sir, is exactly what troubles me! Hoky didn't need to do it; that's what rouses my indignation! He's been running free for two years, and not a thing against him--wiped out all his indictments with good time like an honest thief, and now very likely he's been potted by some large prosperous householder as he was trying to lift a bit of silver; and these country houses never have anything worth risking your life for! My dear boy, can you blame me for being peeved, enormously peeved, when I reflect that Hoky, one of the best pals in the world, is probably lying as dead as a pickled mackerel somewhere back yonder? Or if he has escaped death in his felonious enterprise he may have met the constable and be awaiting the pleasure of a grand jury of righteous farmers of the old commonwealth of Maine!"