noon
It would be wasting time to try and bark up this tree . The scent had evidently led him in the wrong quarter . Accordingly , he turned toward the butcher 's , and here he fully anticipated getting on the track of something . Gabe lived in an outlying quarter , and when he went home in the evening , or at noon , he took a short-cut through Ramsey 's woods , where there was a convenient path . Now it happened that Fred knew this fact , for he had many a time seen the butcher 's boy going and coming . Gabe had a big whistle , and used to amuse himself as he walked to and from home in trying to get the airs from the popular ragtime songs of the day . Fred had heard it said that the boy who whistles is generally an honest fellow , and that guilt and this disposition seldom , if ever , go hand in hand .