Joe warned him.
"All in good time," he answered. "It's life or death for Dinah, and therefore we be called to act; but what we shall do and how we shall both save her and be evens with this rogue will take some planning. Rough justice must be done I grant. He must have rope enough to hang himself with, and he must get the surprise of his life presently; but we must be clever, else we'll spoil all. I've got ideas, but he's a downy chap and nobody must do anything to make him smell a rat."
They abounded in suggestions and Johnny pointed a danger.
"While we're talking and planning," he said, "they may give us the slip any night and be out of reach and vanished off the earth so far as we're concerned. And I say this: 'tis time we knowed what was in their letters. They be keeping apart very clever indeed, so as nobody should link up their names, though my sister always swore they was up to something; but they write, and Jane has watched Dinah go up for a letter more'n half a dozen times; and now it's time we know what's doing, else we'll get left."
"To look into a knave's letters to frustrate his tricks be no crime, I reckon," admitted Robert Withycombe. "What d'you say, Mr. Stockman?"
They all agreed that to read the secret correspondence was permissible, for Dinah's sake. Indeed Joe held that this had become a duty.
Robert expressed sorrow for her; but he knew the situation with respect to John Bamsey and did not, therefore, say much. His own emotions to Dinah, if any had been yet awakened, cooled rapidly. He had no mind to seek a maiden so much involved.
They parted presently; but John was going to tell Jane the truth that night, and impose upon her the task of reading letters when she could, to gather what definite information of Maynard's plans they might contain.
"I hate for Jane to do anything so mean," declared Jerry, "but I see it did ought to be done."
"It ain't mean, my son; it's for the sake of justice, and to come between Dinah and living death," explained Joe.