creeper. I'll show yuh just how it works. I've got a dummy here, too,
that I use to test things. Yuh see there's always just a little chance
it might go wrong; and I don't want to get caught, and made a prisoner,
with nobody around to let me loose."

With that he demonstrated his idea. The trap was sprung just as he meant
it should be, and if the dummy had really been a man, he would have
found himself caught tightly in the log trap, with but a poor chance of
ever getting out again, unless external assistance came along.

"Any more tricks like these two up your sleeve, Obed?" asked Steve,
after they had further examined the deadfall, and Max had pronounced it
skillfully constructed.

"Well, I'm afraid I reached the end o' my rope when I hatched up this
second idea, Steve," the other remarked, in a sort of apologetic tone.
"Of course I might think up a few more if I reckoned it'd be necessary.
But I've got a hunch that one o' the lot is agoin' tuh grab that thief,
providin' he does come around here. Besides, when yuh git right down to
brass tacks, thar isn't as much danger o' my bein' robbed in the
night-time, as in the day."

"And why not, Obed?" further asked Steve; "I'd think that was the very
time you'd feel scariest, when it was dark, and you couldn't see if
anybody was prowling around the farm."

"Stop an' think how foxes have holes in the ground, into which they c'n
burrow when scared the least mite," explained Obed, readily, "and yuh'll
see how hard it'd be for a stranger to lay hands on them. Now, in the
daytime, if they came along, with me away from the place, a man with a