"And there can't be any doubt but what he meant to blow up the cabin of the man he forced himself to believe was his enemy, the kindest-hearted gentleman you and the rest of us ever met up with—tell me that, Elmer, didn't he?"
"Hold on, Lil Artha, don't explode!" cautioned Elmer, soothingly. "I understand how you feel about this ugly business. Yes, that must have been the scheme that brought Zack away up here in the dead of winter. Whether he meant to do Uncle Caleb bodily injury or not we've no means of knowing. Let's hope that the limit of his revenge was confined to the destruction of the cabin, and all the valued treasures it held."
"Well, that would be arson, and the law sits down mighty hard on anybody who deliberately, and 'with malice aforethought,' as I've heard my dad say, sets fire to the property of another. He deserves being kicked out, and we'll have to attend to his case, the whole bunch of us."
The excited scout made a quick movement, as though about to rush into the cabin, waving the piece of gas-pipe which had been fashioned into a rude but deadly bomb with a fuse to it; Elmer, however, tightened his grip on his chum's sleeve.
"Wait! Don't be in such a hurry, old fellow. Let's reason this thing out a little before you spill the fat in the fire!" he told Lil Artha, in that quieting voice of his that carried such weight with the other scouts.
"But, Elmer, don't you see he's a regular firebrand!" urged the tall boy, twisting a little, as though struggling to get loose from the detaining hand; but only in a faint-hearted fashion, because as always the influence of the scout master predominated. "How do we know but what right now he's figuring on doing us all some mean trick? We're friends of Uncle Caleb, and he must look on us as his enemies."
"You forget something, Lil Artha," urged Elmer.
"Oh! yes, in my hurry I'm always forgetting things; but tell me what I've let slip now, Elmer."
"It was yesterday that Zack was heading toward this cabin, breathing all sorts of ugly threats against Uncle Caleb, wasn't it?" Elmer continued, in that smooth argumentative tone he knew how to use so well, and which as a rule was so wonderfully convincing.
"Why, of course it was, Elmer," admitted the other, weakly, yet curiously.