For a moment Colonel Witham's heavy face turned deathly pale, and he leaned for support against one of the beams of the mill. Then the colour came back into his face with a rush, and he stamped angrily on the floor. "Confound you!" he cried. "You clear out, too. I don't know anything about your fortune-tellers, and I don't care. I've got no time to fool away with boys. Now get out." John Ellison walked slowly to the door, leaving the colonel mopping his face and turning alternately white and red; and as he stepped outside Colonel Witham dropped into a chair. Then, as the boys went on together up the hill to the Ellison farm, Colonel Witham, recovering in a measure from the shock he had received, arose from his chair, somewhat unsteady on his legs, and began, for the hundredth and more time, a weary, fruitless search of the old mill, from the garret to the very surface of the water flowing under it. And as Colonel Witham groped here and there, in dusty corners, he muttered, "What on earth did he mean? The fortune-teller--how could he know of that? There's witchcraft at work somewhere. But there aren't any papers in this mill. I know it. I know it. I know it." And still he kept up his search until it was long past the time for shutting down. Three days after this, Lawyer Estes was talking to John Ellison at the farmhouse. "Well, I've run down your witch," he said, smiling; "and there isn't anything to be made out of her. I've been clear to the fair-grounds at Newbury to see her. She's a shrewd one; didn't take her long to see that something was up. Sized me up for a lawyer, I guess, and shut up tighter than a clam. I told her what I knew, but she swore Tim Reardon was mistaken. "Those people have a fear of getting mixed up with the courts; naturally suspicious, I suppose. She declared she had said that the man she talked with asked about some letters he had lost, himself; and that was all she knew about it. No use in my talking, either. I didn't get anything more out of her. We're right where we were before." "Well, I'm going to get into that mill and look around, just the same," exclaimed John Ellison. "I'll do it some way." "Then you'll be committing trespass," said Lawyer Estes, cautiously. "I don't care," insisted the boy. "I won't be doing any harm. I'm not going to touch anything that isn't ours. But I'm going to look." "Then don't tell me about it," said the lawyer. "I couldn't be a party to a proceeding like that." "No, but I know who will," said John Ellison. "It's Henry Burns. He won't be afraid of looking through an old mill at night--and he'll know a way to do it, too." John Ellison tramped into town, that afternoon, and hunted up his friend. "Why, of course," responded Henry Burns; "it's easy. Jack and I'll go with you. It won't do any harm, just to walk through a mill." And he added, laughing, "You know we've been in there once before. Remember the night we told you of?" John Ellison looked serious.