He and Greg went, accompanied by the two farmers. All four trod stealthily. Prescott, in advance, went straight to the bushes that surrounded the brush hut. Still in the lead, Dick, found the doorway, screened by a tattered blanket, pushed it aside and peered in. On the floor of earth lay the Man with the Haunting Face. He was so still that at first Dick thought him dead. Dick motioned to the others to come forward. "Humph!" grunted the Overseer of the Poor. "That's Ed Hoskins, who lives over Pelham way." At sound of the voice the sleeping man quivered, opened his eyes, then, with a scream, sat up, trembling violently. "You've got me!" he screamed. "You've found me---and I'm not yet fit to go!" Dick stepped aside to let the farmers in, while Darrin and Reade approached the spot at a run. "Keep quiet, Hoskins," ordered the Overseer of the Poor. "Quiet, man; I tell you!" "Oh, I didn't mean to do it!" moaned the unhappy captive. "I didn't mean to do it, I tell you! And now I must lose my life before I'm fit to go." "'Touched' here," murmured Prescott, tapping his forehead. "What are you making such a fuss about, Ed Hoskins?" demanded the Overseer of the Poor. "I never meant to harm my wife!" screamed Hoskins in an agony of fear. "We had had words, and I meant nothing but to push her aside so I could pass. But she fell downstairs. It wasn't my fault that her neck was broken!" "Whose neck was broken?" demanded the farmer. "My wife's. But I never meant to do it." "Humph!" remarked the Overseer of the Poor. "If your wife broke her neck, Ed Hoskins, she doesn't know it yet. She's doing some pretty husky work. She's the hired help over at St. Ingram's. She went there to work after you went away." "Don't try to fool me," trembled Hoskins. "Don't! My wife's dead, and now I've got to go and pay the penalty of a crime I never meant to commit." "What you need, Ed," observed the Overseer of the Poor, "is a bath, a couple of square meals, a little daylight, and a freight load of common horse sense. Come out of this place. We'll take you to your wife, and you'll find that she's very much alive, and heart-broken over your running away from her. She's fretting because she thinks her own conduct made you run away from her." "I guess we don't belong here," murmured Dick to his chums. "Suppose we hurry down to the camp." Five minutes later the two farmers also reached camp, holding Hoskins between them.