He thereupon drew something from its place of concealment, and held it up before the eyes of his astonished companion.
"Why, it only looks like a piece of common gaspipe!" exclaimed Elmer.
"Just what it is," Lil Artha went on, in an awed tone; "but say, Elmer, the same is crowded chock full of some sort of stuff that may be dynamite for all I know. It's a sure-enough infernal machine, one of the crude bombs that you read about in the New York papers, such as Italians use when they want to make some rich merchant or banker hand over blackmail money. Look at it yourself, and then you'll know what fetched that skunk of a Zack Arnold up here to this region. He meant to blow Uncle Caleb's cabin to flinders, that's what he did; and p'raps with the owner inside of the same. Huh! no wonder he didn't want that thing to be discovered on his person! I sure don't blame him a little bit!"
And Elmer, as he examined the miserable contrivance which would explode with so great a power for harm, felt a thrill pass all over his body.
CHAPTER XV
A SCOUT'S EDUCATION
"What do you make of it, Elmer; is it a sure enough bomb?" demanded Lil Artha, whose face was working strangely under the violence of his emotions.
"Looks like it was that, and nothing else," admitted the scout master, slowly, with a wrinkle across his forehead, as though he might be considering weighty matters, as indeed he was just then, for one so young.