So Andy, taking heed, managed to tell what had happened without directly accusing any one.  Nevertheless, it was not difficult for those who listened to guess where his suspicions lay.  And perhaps they thought, after all that had occurred in the past, with the hand of Puss Carberry moving the pieces on the chessboard, that Andy was justified in believing as he did.

After a while the excitement died away.  The boys had opened the shed and made sure that no lingering spark remained to threaten their beloved little aeroplane with destruction.  But it was all right and they feasted their eyes on it, as if they never before realized how precious it had become.

“Getting to be a regular thing, seems to me, these night alarms, boys,” remarked one of the neighbors, for not long before they had been aroused in the middle of the night when the two jewelry thieves tried to steal the aeroplane and were baffled in their design by the two boys, sleeping at the time in the shed, so as to guard their flying machine.

“If one watchman ain’t enough I’ll get three—­half a dozen if necessary,” declared Colonel Josiah, as he glared at the offending Shea and pounded on the turf with his heavy cane.  “But these lads are going to be protected, if it takes my last dollar.  I’ll get a Gatling gun and train it here, so we can blow the rascals to smithereens if they try such a dastardly job again.”

But everybody knew that the genial old colonel did considerable talking and blustering, but was harmless withal.

Shea promised to remain awake the balance of the night.  He even went to the house and armed himself with a big horse pistol that the colonel owned and which had many a story connected with its keeping company with the traveler in foreign lands.

“Huh!  I’ve got half a notion to camp right here again, like we did that other time, Frank,” said Andy, before they locked the wide doors of the shed.  “Here’s my cot and blankets, you see, just as I left ’em.”

“No need of that, Andy,” returned his chum, smiling.  “After all this rumpus you couldn’t hire that fellow to come back here tonight.  He may be ten miles away by now.  Wonder if that’s the last I’ll see of my wheel?”

“Now,” continued Andy, “if you’re addressing that to me I’d like to prophesy that you’ll find the bike somewhere off the road a mile or two away, where the fellow pitched it when he concluded to make a sneak back to town.”

“There you go, barking up that same tree again.  I never saw such a positive fellow as you are,” declared the other, smiling.  “Your name ought to be Thomas, for you seem to doubt everything that you can’t just understand.”

“Well, if not Puss, who, then?” demanded Andy, aggressively.

“I confess that I don’t know at this minute,” admitted Frank.  “But I hope to discover the truth in some way.  Remember how that other time, when some one tried to injure us by sneaking in here and cutting the canvas wings of our monoplane all to flinders, I picked up a playing card and we afterwards traced it to the owner?