“Let me finish! Peter, bein’ Peter, acts accordin’. He jumps to a conclusion--and that’s that you’ve done what he’d do himself, if he was in your shoes. He figgers you’ve blazed away, and run up to find a dead deer, and come on the Major, dazed and ragin’, and grabbed the chance to put the blame off on somebody else. He credits you with knowin’ the reputation of the Groche fam’ly hereabouts, and with settin’ the Major on a false trail that leads straight to one Peter o’ that name. Then, havin’ set the Major goin’, you vamoose--and that’s what Peter Groche would ’a’ done himself, if he’d been in your fix. What say to that, Sam?” “I--I don’t know what to say. Only, when the sheriff arrested him, why didn’t he deny----” Once more Lon stopped the boy in mid-sentence. “There you go again--forgettin’ Peter ain’t like most folks! It’s where the crooked thinkin’--and the crooked livin’--comes in. The Major’s in a passion, and Peter has jawed back till he’s ’bout as mad himself. Most likely the sheriff can’t make head nor tail o’ what he’s growlin’. And Peter’s got his reputation, and everybody knows he’s made threats against the Major, and one barrel of his gun has been fired. So the sheriff thinks it’s a pretty clear case, and loads Peter in his wagon, and hauls him to the lock-up. By that time Peter, mebbe, has been workin’ his crooked wits. He sees well enough nobody’d believe him just then if he said he didn’t do it, so he doesn’t waste his breath that way. And mebbe, too, he gets a notion the case against him won’t be so all-fired convincin’ when it comes to a trial, the evidence bein’ circumstantial, you see. Perhaps he’s schemin’ for damages for false arrest--and then, all of a sudden, they turn him loose. And so he skulks off, with a grudge against everybody, but a particular one against Sam Parker, Esq., who, he believes, lied about him to save himself. Sense, ain’t it--Peter’s kind o’ sense, that is?” Sam pondered. “Why--why--perhaps.” Lon wagged his head sagely. “Wal, I’m tellin’ you, Sam, a grudge is jest the one thing in this life Peter’ll live up to. He means to take it out o’ your hide. Now, when things went wrong about the place, and kept on goin’ wrong, and I saw they weren’t due to your footlessness, I had half a notion some kid might be at the bottom of the trouble. But then I began to miss things from the barn--a spare bit, then a wrench, then a new sponge; and I’ll admit that did sort o’ suggest Groche’s manners. And weren’t you tellin’ me a while ago that one of your crowd figgered it out that no boy could have chucked that boulder through your club-house window? Wal, Groche could ’a’ done it. He’s as strong as an ox, confound him! Come now! Piece it all together, and own up it makes quite a case!” “Perhaps it does,” Sam admitted. “But I don’t convince you completely?”