Jake Sanderson, with the pay for the mill-hands, did not arrive that night, nor yet the following morning. Along toward noon, however, there arrived a breathless stripling, white-faced and wild-eyed, with news of him. The boy was young Stephens, son of Andy Stephens, the game-warden¹. He and his father, coming up from Cribb's Ridge², had found the body of Sanderson lying half in a pool beside the road, covered with blood. Near at hand lay the bag, empty, slashed³ open with a bloody⁴ knife. Stephens had sent his boy on into the Settlement for help, while he himself had remained by the body, guarding it lest some possible clue should be interfered⁵ with.  
Swift as a grass fire, the shocking news spread through the village. An excited crowd gathered in front of the store, every one talking at once, trying to question young Stephens. The Sheriff was away, down at Fredericton for a holiday from his arduous⁶ duties. But nobody lamented⁷ his absence. It was his deputy they all turned to in such an emergency.
 
"Where's Tug⁸ Blackstock?" demanded half a dozen awed⁹ 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, terse¹⁰ and pertinent¹¹, 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 trot¹² 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 no thin' yet about the Book Agent, Mister Byles, him as sold ye 'Mother, Home, an' Heaven.' Mebbe 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 scent¹³, and instinctively¹⁴ hostile to a book agent, seized greedily upon the suggestion.
 
"Where is he?" "Send for him." "Did anybody see him this mornin'?" "Rout¹⁵ him out!" "Fetch him along!" The babel of voices started afresh.
 
"He's cleared out," cried a woman's shrill¹⁶ 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 virulently¹⁷. She had not liked the stranger's black whiskers, nor his ministerial garb¹⁸, nor his efforts to get a subscription¹⁹ 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 imperturbable²⁰ and disdainful Deputy Sheriff was impressed by them, she could not refrain from embroidering²¹ 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 constable²², "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 exasperating²³ 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 heed²⁴ whatever. He hurried on down the road toward the scene of the tragedy, his lean jaws²⁵ working grimly upon a huge chew of tobacco, the big, black dog not now at his heels but trotting²⁶ 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 stony²⁷ 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,

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