We had a neighbor, when I was a young man down in Maine, by the name of Bill Bennett, a hard-working farmer, who was very proud of his pile of dry hard wood, which he had prepared for the winter’s cold.

Late in the autumn, however, the wood began to disappear faster than he thought it ought. He was sure that someone was stealing it, and inasmuch as his nearest neighbors had no store of wood whatsoever, and, too, were notoriously shiftless, he concluded that they must be the pilferers.

A little bit of detective work that he practiced to ascertain the truth of his conclusions was certainly ingenious and worked well.

Bennett took a dozen sticks of wood, and bored a large hole in the end of each of them, which he filled with rifle powder, putting about a pound into each stick. He then plugged the holes skillfully to conceal the evidences of his work, sawing off a short bit of the plugged end of each stick, so that the plug would not show, and distributed these sticks upon the part of the pile that was shrinking. He was careful to select the wood for his own burning from another portion of the heap.

The following evening he was looking from his window toward the house of the neighbors, wondering how long it would be before his ingenuity bore fruit, when suddenly there was a flash, a crash and a roar, followed by screams of “Murder!” and “Fire!”

The mystery had been solved.