The next day, in the afternoon, Charles and the boys were in the blacksmith\'s shop repairing a plow that was to be used immediately. Kenneth was at the bellows, and Charles at the anvil, his sleeves rolled high on his brawny arms. Martin stood in the doorway. Presently he whistled softly, and ran to Charles just as he was about to strike the red-hot plowshare which he was holding on the anvil.

"Don\'t make any noise!" he said. "I see a buggy and horse stopping at the gate. It looks like the sheriff\'s rig, and I think he is in it."

Charles dropped his tools, and he and his companions crept to a crack in the wall and peered through it.

"That\'s who it is," Kenneth informed Charles, in a startled voice. "I wonder if—if Tobe has become worse, or—or—"

"I couldn\'t stand that," Martin cried out. "Oh, don\'t think it!"

Charles said nothing, and there was no response from Kenneth, who was grimly peering through the crack. They saw Rowland, bareheaded, walking leisurely from the veranda to the gate. They saw him shaking hands over the buggy-wheels with the sheriff. They could not, at that distance, read his face. Of what was taking place the three watchers could form no idea. Presently they saw Mary come down the walk, pass through the gate, and shake hands with the sheriff.

"Sister means to find out if anything has gone wrong, so she can warn us," Kenneth said. "Brown, this looks pretty tough on us. We were thinking everything was all right, but this looks bad."

Still Charles said nothing. His face, only half illumined by the light through the crack, which struck across his fixed eyes, was grim and perplexed.

They saw Mary at her father\'s side, but the hood of her sunbonnet hid her face from view. The three stood talking for several minutes; then Mary was seen leaving and turning in their direction.

"She\'s coming to tell us," Kenneth said. "Now, we\'ll know. Keep still. Maybe she is afraid we\'ll be seen or heard at work."

Mary appeared in the doorway. She removed her bonnet and smiled reassuringly. "Frightened out of your skins, I\'ll bet," she jested. "I came to tell you. He is not looking for you. He said so plainly, for he saw how worried I was. In fact, he said that Tobe was still improving, and hinted—he didn\'t say so in so many words—but he hinted that he knew you both were about the place, and that he was not going to molest you now that Tobe is out of danger."

Charles was staring at her fixedly; the animation that should have been in his face was absent. "Then he wanted to see your father about something else?" he said.

"Yes, some business, or—" Mary broke off, and with a sudden shadow across her face she stood staring at him. "I don\'t know what he wanted to see father about. It seemed to me that it was of a private nature, and so—so that\'s why I came away."

"Gee! what does it amount to, since he\'s letting us go?" said Martin. He stepped to his sister\'s side and stood with his arm around her waist. For once she seemed unaware of the boy\'s presence. She was recalling something Albert Frazier had said about the sheriff\'s opinion of Charles. Could the present visit pertain to him?

"Thank the Lord, he\'s off!" Kenneth exclaimed. "Bully boy, that chap!"

The brothers went to the doorway, looked all around, and then hastened away to meet their father, who was slowly coming toward the shop. They joined him.

"Where is your sister?" he asked. They told him, and he went on, as if only partially conscious of their eager questions.

"Oh, that\'s all right!" he said, impatiently. "He is not going to bother you. Oh, Mary, where are you?"

"Here, father," she answered, as she came out, accompanied by Charles. "Did you want me?" It seemed to her that he now glanced at Charles with a look of vague displeasure on his face.

"Yes, I want to see you. Come to the house with me, please."

Mary was sure now that something pertaining to Charles had happened, for her father was treating him in a manner that surely indicated it; the old man had taken no notice of him, and that was most unusual.

Leaving the others in the shop, Rowland led his daughter toward the house. "I wanted to see you about a little matter that may be rather serious," he began. "The sheriff didn\'t come to see me about the boys at all, but about Mr. Brown."

"About him!" Mary said, faintly. "What about him?"

"He put a lot of questions to me in regard to Mr. Brown," Rowland said, "but I couldn\'t answer a single one of them. He seemed surprised—astonished, in fact, for he said he didn\'t see how any sensible man could take in a stranger like Brown unless he had proper credentials. I couldn\'t even tell him where Mr. Brown came from, who he was, or anything. I tried to explain that Mr. Brown had been so gentlemanly and useful that we hadn\'t thought such a course necessary, but the sheriff only laughed at me for being so easily hoodwinked."

"Hoodwinked!" Mary protested. "He hasn\'t hoodwinked us, father. I\'m sure he is all we have given him credit for being."

"Well, it seems that the sheriff thinks there is something very suspicious about him. Warrants are out for a number of men who left the circus when Mr. Brown did. The sheriff says that Mr. Brown has been leaving our house at night, and has been seen in town on several occasions. Quite recently he met a stranger at the hotel, a queer fellow with a Northern accent who had refused to register. They were out together the night the gift was made to Mrs. Keith that everybody is talking about, and the man that turned the money over to her answered the description of the stranger that Mr. Brown was with."

"But surely the sheriff is not fool enough to think that giving money away like that was a sign that Mr. Brown was—was a suspicious character!" protested Mary.

"The sheriff thinks that very thing is ground for suspicion," Rowland went on. "He says it may be that Tobe Keith knows more than he has ever let out. It seems that he was seen drinking with som............