David held the tiller, while Andy and Jamie busied themselves with their handbooks.  They were an hour out of Horn’s Bight when David sighted the Horn boat beating up against the wind.  Drawing within hailing distance he told them of the accident.

Mrs. Horn, greatly excited, asked many questions.  David assured her that her husband’s injuries were not serious, nevertheless she was quite certain Lem lay at death’s door.

“’Tis the first time I leaves home in most a year,” she lamented.  “I were feelin’ inside me ’twere wrong to go and leave Lem alone.  And now he’s gone and been shot and liker’n not most killed.”

“’Tis too bad to make Mrs. Horn worry so.  I’m wonderfully sorry,” David sympathized, as the boats passed beyond speaking distance.  “She’ll worry now till they gets home, and the way Lem ate goose I’m thinkin’ he ain’t hurt bad enough to worry much about he.”

“They’ll get there to-night whatever,” said Andy. “’Tis the way of Mrs. Horn to worry, even when we tells she Lem’s doin’ fine.”

“I’m wonderin’ and wonderin’ who ’twere shot Lem,” said David.  “Whoever ’twere had un in his heart to do murder.”

“Whoever ’twere looked in through the window and saw Lem with the fine silver fox on the table and sets out to get the fox,” reasoned Andy.  “The shootin’ were done through the window where there’s a pane of glass broke out.”

“I sees where there’s a pane of glass out,” said David. “’Twas not fresh broke though.”

“No, ’twere an old break,” Andy agreed.  “I goes to look at un, and I sees fresh tracks under the window where the man stands when he shoots.”

“Tracks!” exclaimed David.  “I never thought to look for tracks now!  I weren’t thinkin’ of that!  You thinks of more things than I ever does, Andy.”

“I weren’t thinkin’ of tracks either,” said Andy, disclaiming credit for their discovery.  “Whilst you bakes the bread I just goes to look where the window is broke, and when I’m there I sees the strange-lookin’ tracks.”

“Strange, now!  How was they strange?” asked Jamie excitedly, scenting a deepening mystery.

“They was made with boots with nails in the bottom of un,” explained Andy.  “They was nails all over the bottom of them boots, and they was big boots, them was.  They made big tracks—­wonderful big tracks.”

“’Tis strange, now!  Did you trace un, Andy?  Did you see what way the tracks goes?” asked David.

“’Twere only under the window where the ground were soft and bare of moss that the tracks showed the nails.  I tracks un down though to where they comes in a boat and the boat goes again,” Andy explained.  “The tracks were a day old, and down by the water the tide’s been in and washed un away.  Whoever ‘twere makes un were beyond findin’ whatever.  They were goin’ away, I’m thinkin’, right after they shoots Lem and takes his silver.”

“Did you tell Doctor Joe about the tracks?” asked David.