NOVEMBER JOE
was looking round and over with great care. Then he beckoned to me. The stone was a large flat one, as I have said, and he showed me some scratches upon its farther surface. The scratches were deep and irregular. I stared at them, but to me they conveyed nothing.
"They don't look like the mark of a boat," I ventured.
"They are n't. But that chap made them all right," he said.
"But how or why?"
November laughed. "I won't answer that yet. But I'll tell you this. The robbery was done between two and three o'clock last night."
"What makes you say that?"
November pointed to a grove of birch on the nearer bank.
"Those trees," he answered; then, on seeing my look of bewilderment, he added, "and he was n't a two hundred pound man an' heavier than you, but a little thin chap, and he had n't a boat."
"Then how did he get away? By wading?"
"Maybe he waded."
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