"Well," resumed Peter, "I watched the boat till it went out of sight up the river. There were seven men on board of her, six of 'em pulling at the oars and the seventh steering. No more boats followed her, and I shouldn't have been suspicious if I hadn't thought I recognized the man who was steering."
"Who was he?"
"He looked to me a good deal like Fenton."
"What? The pine robber?"
"Yes, though of course I may have been mistaken. I never saw him but once and that was when he was a blacksmith over by the Court House before the war. My father had sent me over there to have one of the horses shod at his shop. I don't know that I should have remembered him if it hadn't been for something he did that day. I saw him take a half-inch bar of iron and bend it almost double with his hands. That made a great impression upon me, for I didn't believe there was another man in the colony who could do that."
"Probably not," replied Tom. "But what made you think this was one of Fenton's whaleboats?"
"Nothing but Fenton himself. Of course I've heard of the stories of what he's been doing since he became a pine robber. His gang is one of the worst, you know, and the minute I set my two eyes on him I suspected it was Fenton himself."
"Why didn't you get word up the river as soon as you saw him?"
"They've got watchers farther up, and that's their business. Besides, I didn't care to have him double me up the way he did that iron bar. Then, my business was to stay here and give the warning to anybody that might be going up the stream, you see. That's why I waved the flag when I saw you coming."
"And they haven't come back yet?" inquired Tom eagerly.