"I suppose they've hung that poor fellow by this time," said Bob with a shiver.
"I shouldn't wonder," replied George.
"Perhaps he deserved it," remarked Sammy. "He may have murdered somebody besides stealing the girl. His face looked as though he were bad enough for anything. I had another good look at it while he was standing under the tree with the rope around his neck, and I'm surer now than I was before that he was one of the men we saw on the train with that infernal machine."
"How do you know that it was an infernal machine?"
"I don't just know," admitted Sammy. "But a man who's bad enough to kidnap a girl and run off with her is bad enough to blow folks up!"
"I don't care how bad he was," replied George. "It doesn't seem right to hang him without letting him have a lawyer or a trial and giving him his chance."
"Maybe they weren't really going to hang him," put in Bob. "Perhaps they were trying to get him to confess or to tell on his pals or something like that."
This seemed a rather unlikely explanation, and they were having a lively interchange of guesses, when Sammy gave an exclamation.
"What is that over there?" he asked, indicating a place on the left bank of the stream.
"It looks to me like a hole in the side of a little hill," answered George. "Turn the boat's head that way, fellows, and we'll take a look at it."