“You’ll tell me everything, Porter, and do it pretty quick!” snarled Nick Jasniff, flying into a sudden rage. “Don’t you see that you are entirely in our hands, and that we can do as we please with all of you? Unless you tell me everything I want to know, we are coming in there and take those two girls away and leave you two fellows here, bound and gagged. Then, if nobody comes to rescue you, you can starve to death. Do you get me?”
“Oh, Dave! don’t let them do anything like that!” pleaded Jessie, who had been listening over his shoulder to what was said.
“Don’t worry about their binding and gagging us—at least not while we are armed,” put in Roger.
“See here, Jasniff, you can talk all you please, but we do not intend to let you carry out your threats,” said Dave. “Both Morr and I are well armed, and we know how to shoot. In a very short time this place will be completely surrounded and you will be made prisoners.”
“It isn’t so!” cried the former bully of Oak Hall; but the tone of his voice showed his uneasiness.
“It may be so!” cried one of the gypsies quickly. “Remember, Carmenaldo did not return. That looks bad.”
The gypsies began to whisper among themselves, and then one of them pulled Jasniff back.
“We had better go out again and take another look around,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “That young man may speak the truth, and we do not want to run any chances of being captured in such a game as this. If we find the woods clear, we can then come back and settle with these intruders.”
“All right, have your own way,” grumbled Jasniff. “Just the same, I think they came here alone. Didn’t I see them alone at that hotel?”
The gypsies were evidently too disturbed to argue the matter further, and they pushed forward and closed the door in Dave’s face. Then those inside the room heard the lock fastened once more and heard the gypsies tramp away and down the stairs.