“But Matt says I need not hope to escape him by going home,” said Tom. “He reminded me that a constable can catch me in Mount Airy as easily as he can here.”
“That’s so,” assented Ralph, “but what other show have you? When you give him the money you will put him in good humor, and I don’t think he will denounce you until he has had some sort of a row with you. You must keep him good-natured.”
“And the only way I can do that is by keeping his pockets full,” said Tom, with a groan. “I won’t do it. I’ll give him the fifty dollars, because I can’t help myself; and when I part from him he will never see me again. My supply of spending money is not as generous as it might be, and Matt shall not see a dollar of it.”
“Here’s another point,” said Loren, swinging himself from his hammock. “Matt is going to be arrested some day, and what assurance have we that he won’t tell all he knows?”
“We haven’t any,” said Tom, fiercely; and then, to the surprise of both his cousins, he broke out into the wildest kind of a tirade against Joe Wayring and every body who was a friend to him. Knowing that they could not stop him, they let him go on and talk himself out of breath.
“I’d like to see something happen to that boy, for if it hadn’t been for him and his chums I never would have been in this fix,” said Tom, at last. “Because we wouldn’t toady to them, they slammed the door of the archery club in our faces, and went against us in every way they knew how. Well, it is a long lane that has no turning, and we may come out at the top of the heap yet. Will you fellows stand by me? I mean will you go home with me, and come back when I get the money?”
Ralph and Loren gave it as their opinion that their cousin Tom ought to know better than to ask such a question. Hadn’t they always stood by him, through thick and thin, and made common cause with him against every one he did not like? Of course they would stay with him until his trouble with Matt Coyle was settled, and do all they could to help him.
“I’m glad to hear it, for I should dreadfully hate to be left to myself in an emergency like this,” said Tom. “But we haven’t a single hour to lose. Matt said he would give me ten days to go to Mount Airy and return, and we ought to start to-morrow. Which one of you will go to the hotel with me after a supply of grub?”
“Let Ralph go,” said Loren. “He’s treasurer. I will stay here and look out for things about the camp, and perhaps I shall be able to think up some way for you to wriggle out of Matt Coyle’s clutches.”
Ralph, weary of loafing about the camp and glad of an opportunity to stretch his arms, readily agreed to accompany his cousin to the Sportsman’s Home and buy the provisions they would need while on their way to Mount Airy. The two set out at once, and when they came back at dark they had a startling story to tell the camp-keeper. The Irvington bank had been robbed of six thousand dollars, and the thieves had been traced to Indian Lake.