“How would you do it?” asked the squatter, whose anger was all gone now.
“Simply by keeping my eyes open. You see those sail-boats anchored out there? Well, if one of them should happen to get adrift some stormy night, and come safely through the rapids into the pond and I should catch it, I wouldn’t give it up until I got a big reward for saving it, would I? Then again, the pointers, setters and hounds that hunt in these fields and woods very often get lost, and their owners are willing to give almost any price to get them back. I tell you,” exclaimed Tom, who knew by the gleam of intelligence that appeared on the swarthy faces before him that Matt and his family understood him perfectly, “I could make plenty of money by taking up my abode down there on the shore of that pond. If the things I have been talking about didn’t happen of themselves, I’d make them happen—do you see? Well, good-by, and remember that we three boys had no hand in driving you out of Mount Airy.”
So saying Tom walked off followed by his companions, while Matt and his family faced about and went toward their shanty.
CHAPTER VI.
TOM’S PLANS ARE UPSET.
FOR a while the three boys walked along in silence, Loren and Ralph being too amazed to speak, and Tom pluming himself on having done something that would, in the end, bring Joe Wayring and some of the other boys he disliked no end of trouble. The fact that it might bring trouble to himself as well, never once entered his mind. Ralph was the first to speak.
“I wouldn’t have had that thing happen for any thing,” said he.
“What thing?” demanded Tom.
“Why, that interview with the squatter. I could see, by the expression on his face, that you put the very mischief into his head.”
“And that was just what I meant to do,” replied Tom, who laughed heartily when he saw how troubled his cousins were over what he had said to Matt Coyle. “I saw he was thick-headed and needed help, and so I gave it to him.”
“But don’t you know that it is dangerous to trust a man like that? If he gets into trouble through the suggestions you made to him—and he will just as surely as he attempts to act upon them—he’ll blow the whole thing.”