“He must pay me for the violin!” growled Hammond. “I can’t afford to have an instrument like that smashed into kindling, and just let it go at that. As for this land, it is my father’s, and very few people besides members of our club go along the path.”
“Then the path is not wholly private?” queried Frank. “I am glad to know that.”
“And he as good as said he was to blame for leaving the thing where he did!” exclaimed Harry Rattleton. “I don’t think he is entitled to a cent.”
“Come, come!” begged Diamond, again assuming the part of peacemaker, though he was raging inwardly at the belligerent Virginia boys. “We expect to stop a few days in Glendale, and we can’t afford to be anything but your friends, you know. What is the violin worth?”
“A hundred dollars!” Hammond announced, though in reality the instrument had cost him only twenty. “I doubt if I could get another as good for double that sum.”
“I don’t want to quarrel with you,” said Merriwell, “and I won’t, unless I’m driven to it. I’m willing to settle this thing in one way, and in one way only. We will pick three disinterested persons who know something about violins. Let them set a value on the instrument. You stand half the loss for carelessly leaving it in a path which, by your admission, is not wholly private, and I will stand the other half for what I did.”
“Thot’s talk, Merry, me b’y!” shouted Barney Mulloy, who was itching for a “scrap” with these campers.
Hammond gave Barney a quick glance of hate.
“I’ll do nothing of the kind,” he asserted, turning again to Frank. “You pay me a hundred dollars, or I’ll have it out of your hide!”
“Oh, you will, will you?” said Merriwell, facing him, and laughing lightly. “Jump right in, whenever you are ready to begin!”