"How old a man was he?" asked Dick.
"I don't know whether he was a man or a boy."
"Is your eyesight failing, Dave?" asked Tom.
"I haven't eyes in the back of my head," snapped Darry. "Say, aren't you fellows going to hurry up and free me?"
"Can't you free yourself?" suggested Reade.
"If I could have done that I'd now be ranging these woods in search of the perpetrator of this outrage," Darry declared. "Hurry up and untie me!"
"We will, but please be patient for a moment or two longer," begged young Prescott. "This is such a cleverly artistic job that I want to study out just how it was done. How did the fellow attack you?"
"From behind," muttered Darry.
"But how?"
"Wait, and I'll tell you," Dave went on, forcing himself to talk a trifle more calmly. "When I'm free I'll show you the spot over there, in the thicket between the two clumps of bushes. Well, I had gotten this far when I saw the missing steaks. They rested on a tin pan on the ground in the thicket. It looked as though the thief of our supper had gone away to get water or something. I had just stepped, on tiptoe, of course, past this tree when I heard a soft step behind me. Before I could turn, the noose was dropped over my head, and then down on my neck. It was jerked tight, like a flash, and I was pulled against this tree. The fellow took some kind of hitch around the trunk of the tree to hold me——-"