Lon loved an argument. “Hold hard, there!” said he. “To get at things you’ve got to start right. And it ain’t startin’ right to talk about Peter Groche and reasonable things in the same breath. Look here, now!” Lon picked up an empty liniment bottle, and stood it on its neck; whereupon the bottle fell over on its side. “See what’s happened, don’t you?” “But it was upside down.” “Exactly! But that’s the way with Peter Groche--with his brains, I mean. Your mistake is tryin’ to figure on him as a reasonable bein’. But Groche, for years and years, has been like that bottle--all upside down. He’s been carousin’, and loafin’, and stealin’. All his thinkin’ has got warped, and twisted, and crooked.” “Then he’s crazy!” “Not quite that. But he ain’t what folks call normal. Oh, I know the breed!” Sam racked his memory. “You mean he’s a--a degenerate?” he queried. “That’s the ticket! He’s like pizen ivy: he began by bein’ no good, and he’s got wuss and more of a nuisance the more he spreads out.” Sam shook his head doubtfully. “All the same, I don’t follow your argument, Lon. If there’s anything to it, we’d have to figure that Peter had some cause to suppose I was in the scrape; for we might as well drop the notion that, all of a sudden, he’d begin to persecute me, unless he had some tip. But I’ve told you I’m sure nobody gave him one. And as I didn’t see him in the woods, he wouldn’t have seen me there.” “You can’t prove that,” Lon declared. “He’s an old hand at deer huntin’, out o’ season as well as in; and he keeps his eyes peeled mighty sharp. It’s ten to one he had a peek at you, and knew within five rods where you were, when the Major was hit. So it was an easy guess for him, when he was arrested, that you’d figgered in the combination.” “But----” Sam began. Lon interrupted him. “You listen, son! I’ll bet you he not only saw you, but believed you saw him. And he was keepin’ tabs on you and on the Major, too--’tain’t a bad idea, at that, for anybody in the woods in the deer season to watch his neighbors and what they’re about. Wal, then, we have Peter, as keen as a weasel, and full as vicious--we have him, I say, with his eyes and ears busy. Bang! goes your gun. Peter hears it. He waits for what’ll happen--always a chance that if you’ve really sighted a buck, the critter may come his way. Wal, again, in a minute or two, something does come, but it ain’t nothin’ on four legs. It’s the Major, and the Major’s fightin’ mad. Somebody’s winged him, and he thinks it’s Peter; but Peter don’t need no map to show where you come in.” “But I----”