This was something of which neither Mark nor Tom cared to talk. But they could not help themselves. No matter how adroitly they tried to turn it aside Roy brought it up again, with all the eagerness of youth, to whom such things are interesting. “I wonder the robbers have never been caught,” he said. “We do things better in Boston. Why don’t you get a detective from the east? There’s Converse,—nearly equal to Sherlock Holmes. He only needs the slightest clew,—sometimes a word, a look,—to follow to the end. He’d unearth them quick. I believe I could run them down myself, give me time.” “Why don’t you try and get the reward? It is a big one,” Fanny asked. “People think they live here.” “Here!” Roy repeated, glancing around the room, as if in quest of a robber in some of the shadowy corners. “Not in this house, you stupid,” Fanny said, laughingly, “but in the neighborhood,—among the mountains,—and that we possibly meet them every day. The very idea gives me the shivers, and I never see a strange man that I do not think, perhaps you are one of them. It would be dreadful if I had ever been near them, or spoken to them.” “Is there nothing in their appearance to mark them?” Roy asked, and Fanny replied, “Nothing but their size. One is very tall; that is Long John. The other is short; they call him Little Dick. He attacked us. You know I told you that before.” There was a lamp in the room and Tom and Mark were sitting where its light fell upon them. Roy had not noticed them particularly until Fanny spoke of the size of the robbers. Happening then to glance that way he was struck with the expression of Mark’s face and saw the look which passed between him and Tom. “By Jove!” he exclaimed, under his breath. Then, as Fanny looked inquiringly at him he covered his blunder by fanning himself with his hands and asking if the room were not very hot and close. “Let’s go outside, where it is cooler,” he said. Fanny was glad to go and Mark and Tom were glad to have her and be rid for a while of their inquisitive guest. “How much longer could you have stood that,” Tom asked Mark, whose face was bathed in perspiration, and who only replied, “I think it is getting rather hot;” then he went out at the rear door and strolled off into the woods with Nero for company, while Tom stood his ground, deciding to make himself so agreeable to Roy that he would forget the detective Converse and the robbers and his intention to “run them down.” Meantime Roy and Fanny were walking along the road in the moonlight, Fanny supremely happy and trying to answer the many questions Roy was putting to her about the hold-up in which she had a part. She thought she had told him all about it, but here he was asking her such funny questions; “How did Inez look when she confronted the robber? How did the robber look? that is, how tall was he?”