After calling the whole town together to discuss what they had finally agreed upon, and asking if there was any new missing items to report, they asked for suggestions for finding and apprehending the thief. Many ideas were entertained on the floor, but none were any good. A particularly ridiculous one came from a small boy. He said it had to be something. He said that it couldn't possible be anyone from outside the town, because someone would have to have seen something, and since they were all on edge, everyone was suspicious. And we all agree it isn't any of us; besides, someone would have seen something anyway.
This was true enough, the townspeople agreed. People used to come from the larger nearby city to visit and "get away," as they put it, to sample the delicious local food, drink, and purchase some of the pretty cloth that the town was known for, but the town had become so suspicious of strangers, it was uncomfortable, so they stopped coming. This was causing rather a shortage of wealth throughout the whole town, since everyone benefited in some way from the visitors, from the inn to the livery.
However, even though the boy made a good point, everybody laughed at his words, which made everybody feel better, the way you do after a good laugh, except the boy didn't, of course. However, this particular boy was well used to the town laughing at him, since he was very bright, and they just didn't understand how he thought. Many times he had been right, and them wrong, but they hadn't realized it yet. Anyway, the men decided that it was high time to dismiss the meeting, and set up some type of sentry duty.
After picking the men for the first watch, and after reminding everyone to be very careful of the obviously horrible man (or woman, they admitted it could be, to be fair) who was stealing their precious things, they all headed home. As each family arrived home, they almost all discovered items missing... many things, and just from the short time they had been gone! One family of four lost all the right shoes to their nice shoes that they wore to church. Other things that went missing included jewelry of all kinds, twelve clothespins, six sweaters, twenty-nine forks, seventeen spoons, thirty-two pairs of mittens, and about twenty-one socks. Nobody could figure out who was stealing these things, or even why they would want them.