A well was handy and while the crowd was having a drink the woman continued to talk about her troubles.
“The crows are troubling us all the time, and once in a while we have a tramp or two come here,” she vouchsafed. “And yesterday I had two young men stop here and they were just as impudent as they could be.”
This remark interested the Rovers and their chums and they immediately asked the woman for some particulars. She said the two undesirable visitors had lost something on the road and insisted that Tommy help them in hunting for it and then had insisted that she supply them with lunch, asking in anything but a friendly fashion. The two young men had gone off only when Tommy had come in announcing that his father was coming down the road.
“What were the names of those young men?” questioned Fred.
“They didn’t give their names,” answered the woman, “but one called the other Nappy and he called the first fellow Slugger.”
“Slugger Brown and Nappy Martell again!” exclaimed Randy. “Can you beat it?”
CHAPTER IX
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
Mrs. Jandle, the farm woman, gazed at the Rovers and their chums curiously and they had to explain that Nappy Martell and Slugger Brown had once been their school chums but since that time had gotten into all sorts of trouble with the authorities and it was now supposed that they and their families had lost practically all of their money.
“Well, they didn’t look like tramps, I’ll say that for ’em,” said Mrs. Jandle. “They were quite well dressed and they offered to pay for their lunch. But I didn’t let ’em have anything, because, as I said before, I didn’t like their manner. They were very overbearing.”