"Swamps always do, you must know," Elmer told him; "some of them are always half dark even in the middle of the day. That's because of the jumble of vines that hang from tree to tree, and the canopy of branches overhead. Why, down South, as Chatz here can tell you, where Spanish moss covers the trees, it's almost dark in some swamps."
"But, Elmer, there's one thing I just don't understand," suggested Landy.
"Out with it then; and if I can explain I'll be only too willing," he was told.
"Supposing now for the sake of argument that stranger was a bad man who had escaped from a sheriff somewhere, when being taken to the penitentiary; and that he managed to get a strangle hold on our chum, Hen Condit, so that the other just had to do whatever he was told—get all that, do you? Well, if they skipped out of Hickory Ridge night before last, how under the sun could they get away up here in a day or so?"
"Yes, it's something like thirty miles, I should say, Elmer, and it takes that boy Johnny a day and a night to get to our place with his load, all down-grade, too. You remember that Hen Condit never was anything to brag of in the line of a long-distance walker."
"He may have made up his mind that he had to do some tall sprinting," said the other, "when he realized what a hornets' nest he'd stirred up back there."
"Yeth," remarked Ted Burgoyne who had been listening to all this talk with certain ideas of his own, "and lots of times it ithn't tho very hard to get a lift on the road. Wagons and autoth happen along, you know, and the farmers around here are thoft things, you thee."
"I was just going to say that same thing, Ted," Elmer remarked, "when you took the very words out of my mouth. Yes, they may have had a lift; or else Hen had to stretch himself to do the tallest walking of his career. All of which is based on the supposition that they did come away up here, and are hiding right now somewhere about Sassafras Swamp."
"You're figuring on what Johnny said, eh, Elmer?" asked Mark.
"I'm figuring on a whole lot of things," replied the other; "and among them is the fact that some unknown man has been using the swamp for a hiding-place of late."