"You're wrong there," Elmer said. "I don't know, and my suspicions so far are founded on such slight evidence that I don't care to commit myself before the whole of you—yet."
"But from what you said just now," Matty continued, "you don't seem to agree with the rest of us when we call these Italians anarchists."
"Because there hasn't been a solitary thing to prove it. We pathfinders must always discover some trace of the trail, or else we'd go astray. And I've owned up that I'm more than half inclined to believe these people are not the bad lot you'd make out."
"But they've got our chum a prisoner," said Red.
"Looks that way," assented Elmer, cheerfully.
"And honest men would never do a thing like that," declared Red.
"Oh, wouldn't they?" replied the other. "Perhaps now the shoe might be on the other foot."
"Eh?"
"And perhaps these honest people might suspect that you three fellows in uniform represented the great United States army about to surround them, and make them prisoners because they had been occupying private property here at Munsey's mill."
The scouts looked at one another, astonished. Here was a theory then which had never appealed to them before.