"Deacon Spear can't climb that hay-loft," was the perplexed answer I received in a hardly intelligible mutter. "I've been there, and I know; only a boy or a very agile young man could crawl along the beams that lead to that window. It is the one hiding-place in this part of the lane; and when I said yesterday that if I were the police and had the same search to make which they have, I knew where I would look, I meant that same little platform up behind the hay, whose only outlook is yonder window. But I forgot that _you_ have no suspicions of our good Deacon; that _you_ are here on quite a different errand than to search for Silly Rufus. So come along and----" But I resisted his impelling hand. He was so much in earnest and so evidently under the excitement of what appeared to him a great discovery, that he seemed quite another man. This made my own suspicions less hazardous, and also added to the situation fresh difficulties which could only be met by an appearance on my part of perfect ingenuousness. Turning back to the buggy as if I had forgotten something, and thus accounting to any one who might be watching us, for the delay we showed in entering the house, I said to William: "You have reasons for thinking this man a villain, or you wouldn't be so ready to suspect him. Now what if I should tell you that I agree with you, and that this is why I have dragged you here this fine morning?" "I should say you were a deuced smart woman," was his ready answer. "But what can you do here?" "What have we already done?" I asked. "Discovered that they have some one in hiding in what you call an inaccessible place in the barn. But didn't the police examine the whole place yesterday? They certainly told me they had searched the premises thoroughly." "Yes," he repeated, with great disdain, "they said and they said; but they didn't climb up to the one hiding-place in sight. That old fellow Gryce declared it wasn't worth their while; that only birds could reach that loophole." "Oh," I returned, somewhat taken aback; "you called his attention to it, then?" To which William answered with a vigorous nod and the grumbling words: "I don't believe in the police. I think they're often in league with the very rogues they----" But here the necessity of approaching the house became too apparent for further delay. Deacon Spear had shown himself at the front door, and the sight of his astonished face twisted into a grimace of doubtful welcome drove every other thought away than how we were to acquit ourselves in the coming interview. Seeing that William was more or less nonplussed by the situation, I caught him by the arm, and whispering, "Let us keep to our first programme," led him up the walk with much the air of a triumphant captain bringing in a recalcitrant prisoner.