“We’ll say it took him three minutes to walk to Sharpley’s house; that leaves twelve minutes of the quarter of an hour. Say it took him four minutes to hide his clothes when he had come to the spot that he had in his mind. The half of four is two; that leaves ten minutes for him to walk after he had left the town. If he’d kept to the road he might have walked three quarters of a mile in that time; but he didn’t do that, for he got his shoes muddy somewhere. Beside, it isn’t likely that he would walk along the highroad at night with a carpet bag in his hand. It’ld look mighty strange to any one who’d meet him. If he had to walk across lots and climb fences, he couldn’t have covered over half a mile in ten minutes; nor is it likely he would walk less than a quarter of a mile. Now, imagine a pair of big compasses. Open them till they measure a half a mile from point to point; put one point of them on the road between the blacksmith shop and Sharpley’s house and draw a circle. Now draw another circle of a quarter of a mile from point to point. You now have a belt a quarter of a mile wide running in a circle a quarter of a mile distant from the blacksmith shop. If I’ve argued the matter right, you’ll find his clothes hidden somewhere in that belt.”
Will heaved a deep sigh. “Tom,” said he, “you ought to be the lawyer, and I the accused. You’d make a better fist out of my case than I’ll ever be able to do out of yours. I’ll put Daly on the track right away, and see what he makes of it.”
“Hold hard, Will,” said Tom; “as we’ve gone this far, we might as well see whether we can’t go a little farther. Let’s see in what kind of a place Mr. Moor would be likely to hide those clothes. He’d think of only very simple plans in his state of mind, I take it. He might bury them, or burn them, or sink them in the water somewhere. He didn’t bury them, for he took no tools with him, and he couldn’t very well have done it without. Woolen clothes, such as a man wears at this time of the year, don’t burn very easily, and he’d have to go a long distance before he dared build a fire, and, beside, he hadn’t time to do it in the half of an hour that he was gone. Of the three the most likely thing for him to do would be to throw his clothes in the water. Another point is that his shoes were muddy, and so he must have been where it was wet. We have seen that the place he hid his clothes was about a half a mile out of town, and that it was a place such as would occur to him at this time.” Tom stopped abruptly, and rose to his feet. “Will,” cried he, “can’t you guess where he sunk his clothes?”