“I think I’ll try a new plan to-morrow, dad,” announced Tom one night, when he and his father had talked over again, for perhaps the twentieth time, the happenings of the last few weeks.

“What is it, Tom?” asked the inventor.

“Well, I think I’ll take a week’s trip on my machine.  I’ll visit all the small towns around here, but, instead of asking in houses for news of the tramp or his confederates, I’ll go to the police and constables.  I’ll ask if they have arrested any tramps recently, and, if they have, I’ll ask them to let me see the ‘hobo’ prisoners.”

“What good will that do?”

“I’ll tell you.  I have an idea that though the burglar who got in here may not be a regular tramp, yet he disguises himself like one at times, and may be known to other tramps.  If I can get on the trail of Happy Harry, as he calls himself, I may locate the other men.  Tramps would be very likely to remember such a peculiar chap as Happy Harry, and they will tell me where they had last seen him.  Then I will have a starting point.”

“Well, that may be a good plan,” assented Mr. Swift.  “At any rate it will do no harm to try.  A tramp locked up in a country police station will very likely be willing to talk.  Go ahead with that scheme, Tom, but don’t get into any danger.  How long will you be away?”

“I don’t know.  A week, perhaps; maybe longer.  I’ll take plenty of money with me, and stop at country hotels overnight.”

Tom lost no time in putting his plan into execution.  He packed some clothes in a grip, which he attached to the rear of his motor-cycle, and then having said good-by to his father, started off.  The first three days he met with no success.  He located several tramps in country lock-ups, where they had been sent for begging or loitering, but none of them knew Happy Harry or had ever heard of a tramp answering his description.

“He ain’t one of us, youse can make up your mind to dat,” said one “hobo” whom Tom interviewed.  “No real knight of de highway goes around in a disguise.  We leaves dat for de story-book detectives.  I’m de real article, I am, an’ I don’t know Happy Harry.  But, fer dat matter, any of us is happy enough in de summer time, if we don’t strike a burgh like dis, where dey jugs you fer panhandlin’.”

In general, Tom found the tramp willing enough to answer his questions, though some were sullen, and returned only surly growls to his inquiries.

“I guess I’ll have to give it up and go back home,” he decided one night.  But there was a small town, not many miles from Shopton, which he had not yet visited, and he resolved to try there before returning.  Accordingly, the next morning found him inquiring of the police authorities in Meadton.  But no tramps had been arrested in the last month, and no one had seen anything of a tramp like Happy Harry or three mysterious men in an automobile.

Tom was beginning to despair.  Riding along a silent road, that passed through a strip of woods, he was trying to think of some new line of procedure, when the silence of the highway, that, hitherto, had resounded only with the muffled explosions of his machine, was broken by several exclamations.