"How many times have I got to set down on you, Alf Reesling?" exploded Anderson. "Doggone, I'd like to know how a man's to solve mysteries if he's got to stand around half the time an' listen to fambly quarrels. Tell yer wife I'll--" "This ain't no family quarrel. Besides, I ain't got no wife. It's about this here--" "That'll do, now, Alf! Not another word out of you!" commanded Anderson direfully. "But, dern you, Anderson," exploded Alf, "I've got to tell you--" But Anderson held up a hand. "Don't swear in the presence of the dead," he said solemnly. "You're drunk, Alf; go home!" And Alf, news and all was hustled from the schoolhouse by a self-appointed committee of ten. "Now, we'll search fer the body," announced Anderson. "Git out of the way, Bud!" "I ain't standin' on it," protested twelve-year-old Bud Long. "Well, you're standin' mighty near them blood-stains an'--" "Yes, 'n ain't blood a part of the body?" rasped Isaac Porter scornfully; whereupon Bud faded into the outer rim. "First we'll look down cellar," said Mr. Crow. "Where's the cellar at?" "There ain't none," replied Elon Jones. "What? No cellar? Well, where in thunder did they hide the body, then?" "There's an attic," ventured Joe Perkins. A searching party headed by Anderson Crow shinned up the ladder to the low garret. No trace of a body was to be found, and the searchers came down rather thankfully. Then, under Mr. Crow's direction, they searched the wood piles, the woods, and the fields for many rods in all directions. At noon they congregated at the schoolhouse. Alf Reesling was there. "Find it?" said he thickly, with a cunning leer. He had been drinking. Anderson was tempted to club him half to death, but instead he sent him home with Joe Perkins, refusing absolutely to hear what the town drunkard had to say. "Well, you'll wish you'd listened to me," ominously hiccoughed Alf; and then, as a parting shot, "I wouldn't tell you now fer eighteen dollars cash. You c'n go to thunder!" It was _lèse majesté_, but the crowd did nothing worse than stare at the offender. Before starting off on the trail of the big sleigh, Anderson sent this message by wire to the lawyers in Chicago: "_I have found the girl you want, but the body is lost. Would you just as soon have her dead as alive_? "ANDERSON CROW." In a big bob-sled the marshal and a picked sextette of men set off at one o'clock on the road over which the sleigh had travelled many hours before. Anderson had failed to report the suspected crime to the sheriff at Boggs City and was working alone on the mystery. He said he did not want anybody from town interfering with his affairs. "Say, Andy--Anderson," said Harry Squires, now editor of the _Banner_, "maybe we're hunting the wrong body and the wrong people." "What do you mean?"