“I should say he was,” Bob managed to reply.  “He ran like a deer.  He knocked you flatter than a pancake, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t hurt me as badly as I hurt him,” said Lester.  “Did you hear my club ring on his head?”

“No, but I heard you yell.  You didn’t strike him.”

“What’s the reason I didn’t?  I did, too, but it must have been a glancing blow, for if I had hit him fairly, I should have knocked him flatter than he knocked me.  I yelled just to frighten him.”

“I guess you succeeded, for I never saw a man run as he did.  He got away, and he took the meal and bacon with him.  They’ll not do him any good, however, for he’ll be in the calaboose by this time to-morrow, if there are men enough in the settlement to find him.  I know him.”

“You do?  Who was he?”

“Godfrey Evans.  He’s been hiding in the cane ever since he and Clarence Gordon got into that scrape, and no one has ever troubled him.  But somebody will trouble him now.  I’ll tell my father of it the first thing.  I wonder how Dave will feel when he sees his father arrested and packed off to jail?”

“I wouldn’t do anything of the kind, if I were you,” said Lester.

“You wouldn’t?” cried Bob, greatly astonished.  “Well, I won’t let this chance to be revenged on Dave slip by unimproved, now I tell you.”

“We can take revenge in a better way than that.  We’ve got just as good a hold on him now as we want, and we’ll make him promise that he will make no effort to catch those quails.”

“O, I am no longer interested in that quail business,” said Bob, loftily.  “I’d rather have three hundred and sixty dollars than seventy-five.”

“But you must remember that you haven’t been appointed mail carrier yet, so you are by no means sure of your three hundred and sixty dollars.  And even if you were, it would be worth your while to earn the seventy-five dollars, if you could, for that amount of money isn’t to be found on every bush.”

Lester went on to tell his friend of a bright idea that had just then occurred to him, and before he had fully explained how the events of the night could be made to benefit them, he had won Bob over to his way of thinking.  The latter promised that he would say nothing to his father about the theft of which Godfrey had been guilty, until he and Lester had first told David of it and noted the effect it had upon him.  If they could work upon his feelings sufficiently to induce him to give up the idea of trapping the quails, well and good.  Godfrey might have the meal and bacon, and welcome.  But if David was still obstinate and refused to listen to reason, they would punish him by putting the officers of the law on his father’s track.

“It is a splendid plan and it will work, I know it will,” exclaimed Bob, in great glee.  “It will be some time before my appointment—­those folks in Washington move very slowly—­and while I am waiting for it, I may as well make seventy-five dollars.  I can get my shot-gun with it, and spend my three hundred and sixty for the other things I need.”