Mr. Allen looked at the boys steadily for a moment, and then asked with significant emphasis. "What were you doing with the cow you found in the pasture?" A glance of amazement passed between the boys, a look not lost on Mr. Allen. "Her gate was closed up," Bill answered quickly. "We opened it so that the cow could get through." "It was long past milking time and the cow wanted to go home," added Rooster. "H'm!" said Mr. Allen thoughtfully. "Then you admit that you were in a pasture with a cow last night. Why is it that you did not tell me about that when I questioned you earlier in the day?" "I suppose because we didn't think it was important," replied Garry. "You asked us whether we knew how the cow got into the Latin room, and we told you the truth." "Do you say again that you don't know who brought the cow to the classroom?" asked Mr. Allen, looking at them keenly. "On our word of honor we don't know any more about that than you do, sir," replied Garry earnestly, and Bill and Rooster nodded their acquiescence. "That will do for the present." The words were accompanied by a gesture of dismissal. Feeling the futility of making any further attempts at defense, the boys had no alternative but to leave the office. They were under a cloud, and they knew it. While they smarted under a sense of injustice, they asked themselves and each other who could have told Mr. Allen of that innocent incident of their being with the cow the evening before. Innocent it surely was, prompted purely by their kindness of heart. But they were acutely conscious that it had been extremely unfortunate that the day before the cow appeared in the classroom they had been seen with a cow in the pasture. "Not guilty, but how can we prove it?" asked Rooster disconsolately. "Who told Mr. Allen that we were there?" pondered Bill. "You fellows are thick," declared Garry. "Sandy Podder is the answer." The others nodded a quick assent. Those three boys, only half seen through the dusk! Rooster thought he had recognized Sandy Podder. Now in the light of after events, the boys were sure he had. Who but Sandy Podder or one of his cronies would care to implicate them by reporting their where-abouts the evening before? Any one else passing along the road would have seen, despite the dusk, that their business there was simple enough. A little later their suspicion was confirmed when on the dismissal of the classes, they learned of the principal's interrogation of Sandy and Lent and the answers they had given. "Pretended to be awfully sorry that he had to give his evidence, too," reported Ollie Scarsdale, who was in the same grade with Sandy. "Yet I saw him grinning afterward and whispering to Lent Stewart. He thinks he's got you in Dutch all right." "There's Sandy's pip," remarked Bill later, when the boys were discussing the matter among themselves. "It's a dirty put-up job!" cried Rooster hotly.