"This," said he, "may be that kind of a boot. Now promise not to talk about it for a year and a day--not even to me--and at the end of that time, why we'll all go and see what's in it. No," he said, "you mustn't go to look at it every now and then--that would spoil the charm. Let me see. This is the twenty-eighth--a year and a day--hum." And he made his calculations. Then he said: "By the way, Mary, don't you and the children ever get hungry between meals? If you were to take bread and meat, and make up sandwiches to take on your excursions, they'd never be missed. I'd see to it," he said, "that they weren't missed. Growing children, you know." And he strode on, Ellen riding on his shoulder like a princess on her genii. III Ellen and I were very firm to have nothing to do with the boot in the oak tree; and we had two picnics in the hollow and played for hours in the adjoining woods without once looking up. Mary had become very strict with us about scattering papers and eggshells at our out-of-door spreads; and whatever fragments of food were left over she would make into a neat package and hide away under a stone; but in other matters she became less and less precise: as, for instance, she left Ellen's best doll somewhere in the neighborhood of the hollow oak, and had to go all the way back for it in the dusk; and another time (we had also been to the store at Bartow for yeast) she left her purse that had two months' wages in it and more, but wasn't lucky enough to find that. It was considered remarkable on all hands that Braddish had not yet been caught. Hagan's heelers, who swung many votes, had grown very sharp with the authorities, and no efforts were spared to locate the criminal (he was usually referred to as the "murderer") and round him up. Almost daily, for a time, we were constantly meeting parties of strange men, strolling innocently about the country at large or private estates as if they were looking things over with a view to purchase. And now and then we met pairs of huntsmen, though there was no game in season, very citified, with brand-new shotguns, and knickerbockers, and English deer-stalker caps. And these were accompanied by dogs, neither well suited nor broken to the business of finding birds and holding them. There was one pair of sportsmen whose makeshift was a dropsical coach dog, very much spotted. And, I must be forgiven for telling the truth, one was followed, _ventre a terre_, by a dachshund. My father, a very grave man with his jest, said that these were famous detectives, so accoutred as not to excite comment. And their mere presence in it was enough to assure the least rational that Braddish must by now have fled the country. "Their business," he said, "is to close the stable door, if they can find it, and meanwhile to spend the money of the many in the roadhouses of the few."