“Where’s Tug Blackstock?” demanded half a dozen awed voices. And, as if in answer, the tall, lean figure of the Deputy Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County came striding in haste up the sawdusty road, with the big, black dog crowding eagerly upon his heels.

The clamour of the crowd was hushed as Blackstock put a few questions, terse and pertinent, to the excited boy. The people of Nipsiwaska County in general had the profoundest confidence in their Deputy Sheriff. They believed that his shrewd brain and keen eye could find a clue to the most baffling of mysteries. Just now, however, his face was like a mask of marble, and his eyes, sunk back into his head, were like points of steel. The murdered man had been one of his best friends, a comrade and helper in many a hard enterprise.

“Come,” said he to the lad, “we’ll go an’ see.” And he started off down the road at that long loose stride of his, which was swifter than a trot and much less tiring.

“Hold on a minute, Tug,” drawled a rasping nasal voice.

“What is it, Hawker?” demanded Blackstock, turning impatiently on his heel.

“Ye hain’t asked nothin’ yet about the Book Agent, Mister Byles, him as sold ye ‘Mother, Home, an’ Heaven.’ Maybe he could give us some information. He said as how he’d had some talk with poor old Jake.”

Blackstock’s lips curled slightly. He had not read the voluble stranger as a likely highwayman in any circumstances, still less as one to try issues with a man like Jake Sanderson. But the crowd, eager to give tongue on any kind of a scent, and instinctively hostile to a book agent, seized greedily upon the suggestion.

“Where is he?” “Send for him.” “Did anybody see him this mornin’?” “Rout him out!” “Fetch him along!” The babel of voices started afresh.

“He’s cleared out,” cried a woman’s shrill voice. It was the voice of Mrs. Stukeley, who kept the boarding-house. Every one else was silent to hear what she had to say.

“He quit my place jest about daylight this morning,” continued the woman virulently. She had not liked the stranger’s black whiskers, nor his ministerial garb, nor his efforts to get a subscription out of her, and she was therefore ready to believe him guilty without further proof. “He seemed in a powerful hurry to git away, sayin’ as how the Archangel Gabriel himself couldn’t do business in this town.”

Seeing the effect her words produced, and that even the usually imperturbable and disdainful Deputy Sheriff was impressed by them, she could not refrain from embroidering her statement a little.

“Now ez I come to think of it,” she went on, “I did notice as how he seemed kind of excited an’ nervous like, so’s he could hardly stop to finish his breakfus’. But he took time to make me knock half-a-dollar off his bill.”

“Mac,” said Blackstock sharply, turning to Red Angus MacDonald, the village constable, “you take two of the boys an’ go after the Book Agent. Find him, an’ fetch him back. But no funny business with him, mind you. We hain’t got a spark of evidence agin him. We jest want him as a witness, mind.”

The crowd’s excitement was somewhat damped by this pronouncement, and Hawker’s exasperating voice was heard to drawl:

“No evidence, hey? Ef that ain’t evidence, him skinnin’ out that way afore sun-up, I’d like to know what is!”

But to this and similar comments Tug Blackstock paid no heed whatever. He hurried on down the road toward the scene of the tragedy, his lean jaws working grimly upon a huge chew of tobacco, the big, black dog not now at his heels but trotting a little way ahead and casting from one side of the road to the other, nose to earth. The crowd came on behind, but Blackstock waved them back.

“I don’t want none o’ ye to come within fifty paces of me, afore I tell ye to,” he announced with decision. “Keep well back, all of ye, or ye’ll mess up the tracks.”

But this proved a decree too hard to be enforced for any length of time.

When he arrived at the place where the game-warden kept watch beside the murdered man, Blackstock stood for a few moments in silence, looking down upon the body of his friend with stony face and brooding eyes. In spite of his grief, his practised observation took in the whole scene to the minutest detail, and photographed it upon his memory for reference.

The body lay with face and shoulder and one leg and arm in a deep, stagnant pool by the roadside. The head was covered with black, clotted blood from a knife-wound in the neck. Close by, in the middle of the road, lay a stout leather satchel, gaping open, and quite empty. Two small memorandum books, one shut and the other with white leaves fluttering, lay near the bag. Though the roadway at this point was dry and hard, it bore some signs of a struggle, and toward the edge of the water there were several little, dark, caked lumps of puddled dust.

Blackstock first examined the road minutely, all about the body, but the examination, even to such a practised eye as his, yielded little result. The ground was too hard and dusty to receive any legible trail, and, moreover, it had been carelessly over-trodden by the game-warden and his son. But whether he found anything of interest or not, Blackstock’s grim, impassive face gave no sign.

At length he went over to the body, and lifted it gently. The coat and shirt were soaked with blood, and showed marks of a fierce struggle. Blackstock opened the shirt, and found the fatal wound, a knife-thrust which had been driven upwards between the ribs. He laid the body down again, and at the same time picked up a piece of paper, crumpled and blood-stained, which had lain beneath it. He spread it open, and for a moment his brows contracted as if in surprise and doubt. It was one of the order forms for “Mother, Home, and Heaven.”

He folded it up and put it carefully between the leaves of the note-book which he always carried in his pocket.

Stephens, who was close beside him, had caught a glimpse of the paper, and recognized it.

“Say!” he exclaimed, under his breath. “I never thought o’ him!”

But Blackstock only shook his head slowly, and called the big black dog, which had been waiting all this time in an attitude of keen expectancy, with mouth open and tail gently wagging.

“Take a good look at him, Jim,” said Blackstock.

The dog sniffed the body all over, and then looked up at his master as if for further directions.

“An’ now take a sniff at this.” And he pointed to the rifled bag.

“What do you make of it?” he inquired when the dog had smelt it all over minutely.

Jim stood motionless, with ears and tail drooping, the picture of irresolution and bewilderment.

Blackstock took out again the paper which he had just put away, and offered it to the dog, who nosed it carefully, then looked at the dead body beside the pool, and growled softly.

“Seek him, Jim,” said Blackstock.

At once the dog ran up again to the body, and back to the open book. Then he fell to circling about the bag, nose to earth, seeking to pick up the elusive trail.

At this point the crowd from the village, unable longer to restrain their eagerness, surged forward, led by Hawker, and closed in, effectually obliterating all trails. Jim growled angrily, showing his long white teeth, and drew back beside the body as if to guard it. Blackstock stood watching his action with a brooding scrutiny.

“What’s that bit o’ paper ye found under him, Tug?” demanded Hawker vehemently.

“None o’ yer business, Sam,” replied the deputy, putting the blood-stained paper back into his pocket.

“I seen what it was,” shouted Hawker to the rest of the crowd. “It was one o’ them there dokyments that the book agent had, up to the store. I always said as how ’twas him.”

“We’ll ketch him!” “We’ll string him up!” yelled the crowd, starting back along the road at a run.

“Don’t be sech fools!” shouted Blackstock. “Hold on! Come back I tell ye!”

But he might as well have shouted to a flock of wild geese on their clamorous voyage through the sky. Fired by Sam Hawker’s exhortations, they were ready to lynch the black-whiskered stranger on sight.

Blackstock cursed them in a cold fury.

“I’ll hev to go after them, Andy,” said he, “or there’ll be trouble when they find that there book agent.”

“Better give ’em their head, Tug,” protested the warden. “Guess he done it all right. He’ll git no more’n’s good for him.”

“Maybe he did it, an’ then agin, maybe he didn’t,” retorted the Deputy, “an’ anyways, they’re just plumb looney now. You stay here, an’ I’ll follow them up. Send Bob back to the Ridge to fetch the coroner.”

He turned and started on the run in pursuit of the shouting crowd, whistling at the same time for the dog to follow him. But to his surprise Jim did not obey instantly. He was very busy digging under a big whitish stone at the other side of the pool. Blackstock halted.

“Jim,” he commanded angrily, “git out o’ that! What d’ye mean by foolin’ about after woodchucks a time like this? Come here!”

Jim lifted his head, his muzzle and paws loaded with fresh earth, and gazed at his master for a moment. Then, with evident reluctance, he obeyed. But he kept looking back over his shoulder at the big white stone, as if he hated to leave it.

“There’s a lot o’ ordinary pup left in that there dawg yet,” explained Blackstock apologetically to the game-warden.

“There ain’t a dawg ever lived that wouldn’t want to dig out a woodchuck,” answered Stephens.

III

The black-whiskered stranger had been overtaken by his pursuers about ten miles beyond Brine’s Rip, sleeping away the heat of the day under a spreading birch tree a few paces off the road. He was sleeping soundly – too soundly indeed, as thought the experienced constable, for a man with murder on his soul.

But when he was roughly aroused and seized, he seemed so terrified that his captors were all the more convinced of his guilt. He made no resistance as he was being hurried along the road, only clinging firmly to his black leather case, and glancing with wild eyes from side to side as if nerving himself to a desperate dash for liberty.

When he had gathered, however, a notion of what he was wanted for, to the astonishment of his captors, his terror seemed to subside – a fact which the constable noted narrowly. He steadied his voice enough to ask several questions about the murder – questions to which reply was curtly refused. Then he walked on in a stolid silence, the ruddy colour gradually returning to his face.

A couple of miles before reaching Brine’s Rip, the second search party came in sight, the Deputy Sheriff at the head of it and the shaggy black form of Jim close at his heels. With a savage curse Hawker sprang forward, and about half the party with him, as if to snatch the prisoner from his captors and take instant vengeance upon him.

But Blackstock was too quick for them. The swiftest sprinter in the county, he got to the other party ahead of the mob and whipped around to face them, with one hand on the big revolver at his hip and Jim showing his teeth beside him. The constable and his party, hugely astonished, but confident that Blackstock’s side was the right one to be on, closed protectingly around the prisoner, whose eyes now almost bulged from his head.

“You keep right back, boys,” commanded the Deputy in a voice of steel. “The law will look after this here prisoner, if he’s the guilty one.”

“Fur as we kin see, there ain’t no ‘if’ about it,” shouted Hawker, almost frothing at the mouth. “That’s the man as done it, an’ we’re agoin’ to string ’im up fer it right now, for fear he might git off some way atween the jedges an’ the lawyers. You keep out of it now, Tug.”

About half the crowd surged forward with Hawker in front. Up came Blackstock’s gun.

“Ye know me, boys,” said he. “Keep back.”

They kept back. They all fell back, indeed, some paces, except Hawker, who held his ground, half crouching, his lips distorted in a snarl of rage.

“Aw now, quit it, Sam,” urged one of his followers. “’Tain’t worth it. An’ Tug’s right, anyways. The law’s good enough, with Tug to the back of it.” And putting forth a long arm he dragged Hawker back into the crowd.

“Put away yer gun, Tug,” expostulated another. “Seein’s ye feel that way about it, we won’t interfere.”

Blackstock stuck the revolver back into his belt with a grin.

“Glad ye’ve come back to yer senses, boys,” said he, perceiving that the crisis was over. “But keep an eye on Hawker for a bit yet. Seems to ’ave gone clean off his head.”

“Don’t fret, Tug. We’ll look after him,” agreed several of his comrades from the mill, laying firmly persuasive hands upon the excited man, who cursed them for cowards till they began to chaff him roughly.

“What’s makin’ you so sore, Sam?” demanded one. “Did the book agent try to make up to Sis Hopkins?”

“No, it’s Tug that Sis is making eyes at now,” suggested another. “That’s what’s puttin’ Sam so off his nut.”

“Leave the lady’s name out of it, boys,” interrupted Blackstock, in a tone that carried conviction.

“Quit that jaw now, Sam,” interposed another, changing the subject, “an’ tell us what ye’ve done with that fancy belt o’ yourn ’at ye’re so proud of. We hain’t never seen ye without it afore.”

“That’s so,” chimed in the constable. “That accounts for his foolishness. Sam ain’t himself without that fancy belt.”

Hawker stopped his cursing and pulled himself together with an effort, as if only now realizing that his followers had gone over completely to the side of the law and Tug Blackstock.

“Busted the buckle,” he explained quickly. “Mend it when I git time.”

“Now, boys,” said Blackstock presently, “we’ll git right back along to where poor Jake’s still layin’, and there we’ll ask this here stranger what he knows about it. It’s there, if anywheres, where we’re most likely to git some light on the subject. I’ve sent over to the Ridge fer the coroner, an’ poor Jake can’t be moved till he comes.”

The book agent, his confidence apparently restored by the attitude of Blackstock, now let loose a torrent of eloquence to explain how glad he would be to tell all he knew, and how sorry he was that he knew nothing, having merely had a brief conversation with poor Mr. Sanderson on the morning of the previous day.

“Ye’ll hev lots o’ time to tell us all that when we’re askin’ ye,” answered Blackstock. “Now, take my advice an’ keep yer mouth shet.”

As Blackstock was speaking, Jim slipped in alongside the prisoner and rubbed against him with a friendly wag of the tail as if to say:

“Sorry to see you in such a hole, old chap.”

Some of the men laughed, and one who was more or less a friend of Hawker’s, remarked sarcastically:

“Jim don’t seem quite so discriminatin’ as usual, Tug.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the Deputy drily, noting the dog’s attitude with evident interest. “Time will show. Ye must remember a man ain’t necessarily