“Humph! just wait till the law has its say!” retorted Nat. “Then maybe you’ll get what is coming to you!”
Some of the boys wanted to go to town—to see the damaged hotel—but Doctor Clay would not permit this. In the meantime the wreckage was being cleared away, and the authorities and Jason Sparr were doing their best to locate the author or authors of the crime.
Then came a great surprise, in the shape of a letter delivered in a mysterious way to the hotel-keeper. He was seated in the hotel office in the evening, talking to one of the town constables, when a missive was hurled at him through an open window. He dodged at first, fearing more dynamite, but when he saw it was only a letter, he picked it up and turned it over. It was addressed to him and marked “Private and Personal.”
“Wonder what this is?” he mused, and walked over to the light to read the letter. It was written on a single sheet of paper, in lead pencil, and evidently in a disguised hand. It contained but a few lines, as follows:
“If you want to catch the fellows who blew up your hotel have these boys of Oak Hall school arrested 165 at once, Philip Lawrence, Benj. Basswood, David Porter, Roger Morr, and Joseph Beggs. They were together when it was done, and one or more of them surely did it.
“One Who Knows.”
The hotel-keeper read this letter several times and then stuffed it into his pocket. Then he went into the next room and drew from a drawer several things wrapped up in a newspaper.
“I am going down to see the squire,” he said, to the constable. “You can come along, if you want to.”
“What was in the letter?”
“The names of the rascals who blew up my hotel.”