"What can they be doing up around Hope?" murmured Sam.
"Maybe they are sweet on some of the girls," returned Tom. "I know they used to go up there, when they attended Brill."
"I hope, if they visit Hope, they don't speak to Dora and the others," said Dick, as his face clouded.
"Maybe we better warn the girls," said Sam.
"No, don't do that," said Tom. "You'd only scare them. They know Koswell and Larkspur well enough. Don't say anything." And so the matter was dropped.
Two days later came a special delivery letter from home that filled the three boys with intense interest.
"Josiah Crabtree and Tad Sobber have at last shown their hand," wrote Mr. Anderson Rover. "They have sent an unsigned communication to me demanding fifty thousand dollars. They give me just two weeks in which to get the money together in cash and place it at a certain spot along the road between our home and Oak Run. If the money is not forthcoming they promise to blow up every building on the farm. The communication says, 'You can pay half of this and get the other half from your lady friends.' Which means, of course, the Stanhopes and Lanings."
"Of all the cowardly things!" cried Tom, after listening to the above. "Why, it's a regular sort of Black Hand communication!"
"So it is," added Sam. "What else does dad say," he went on, and Dick continued the reading of the letter:
"At first I was inclined to treat the communication lightly and laugh at it, but then came another letter—a mere scrawl, stating they would give me a taste of what to expect that night. I told the detective of this and he came to the house and remained all night with us. About three o'clock in the morning there was an explosion outside, and when we dressed and ran out we found one of the chicken houses blown to flinders by dynamite or some other explosive. About one hundred chickens were destroyed."