He paused. The house drew a long, deep breath, shook its strained cords
and muscles free and burst into cheers. "Dang him!" said Ham Sandwich,
"that's why he was snooping around in the chaparral, instead of picking
up points out of the P'fessor's game. Looky here--he ain't no fool,
boys."

"No, sir! Why, great Scott--"

But Stillman was resuming:

"While we were out yonder an hour or two ago, the owner of the gimlet and
the trial candle took them from a place where he had concealed them--it
was not a good place--and carried them to what he probably thought was a
better one, two hundred yards up in the pine woods, and hid them there,
covering them over with pine needles. It was there that I found them.
The gimlet exactly fits the hole in the barrel. And now--"

The Extraordinary Man interrupted him. He said, sarcastically:

"We have had a very pretty fairy tale, gentlemen--very pretty indeed.
Now I would like to ask this young man a question or two."

Some of the boys winced, and Ferguson said:

"I'm afraid Archy's going to catch it now."

The others lost their smiles and sobered down. Mr. Holmes said:

"Let us proceed to examine into this fairy tale in a consecutive and
orderly way--by geometrical progression, so to speak--linking detail to