"What things?" Tom managed to ask, while Ralph and Loren nerved themselves for what was coming.
"What things!" repeated Prime, in a tone that almost drove Tom frantic. "Don't you suppose I know as well as you do that when Matt Coyle stole Joe Wayring's canvas canoe a year ago last summer, he did it with your knowledge and consent? I will say more than that. You urged him to take it."
"Why—why, you—" Tom began, and then he paused. There was a look on Prime's face which told him that there was more behind; and now that he was in for it, Tom thought it would be a good plan to find out just how much the Mount Airy people knew of his dealings with the squatter.
"It has all come out on you," continued Prime. "And I know, too, that it was through the information you gave him that Matt followed Wayring to No-Man's Pond and committed that assault upon him."
"The idea!" exclaimed Tom, trying to look surprised, though inwardly he quaked with fear. "I never told Matt to follow Joe Wayring to No-Man's Pond. I never saw him while I was in the woods,—did I, boys?" he added, appealing to his cousins.
"I know a story worth half a dozen of that," said the clerk, before either Ralph or Loren could collect their wits for a reply. "Some of the sportsmen who were stopping at one of the Indian Lake hotels saw you wait for him at a certain place for more than an hour; and when at last Matt arrived, you held quite a lengthy consultation with him."
Tom was so amazed that he could not utter a word. Prime seemed to have the story pretty straight—so straight, in fact, that Loren did not think it best for him to deny it; so he hastened do say:
"If all these ridiculous things which you say you have heard are true, how does it happen that they did not come before the Grand Jury?"
"There were two good reasons for it," answered Prime. "In the first place, there was no one to appear against Tom; and in the second, Jake Coyle, who was the only one of the family tried before the Circuit Court, was not accused of stealing the canoe or of making an assault upon Joe Wayring. He was charged with breaking open the door of Haskins's cellar, and for that he received his sentence. If Matt Coyle had been on trial, there would have been other and more interesting developments. I tell you, Mr. Bigden, it was a lucky thing for you that he was drowned."
"Now, let me say a word in your private ear," said Tom, who had had time to take a hasty review of the situation. "There is such a thing as wagging your tongue too freely, and it constitutes an offense of which the law sometimes takes notice. You don't want to publish the outrageous stories you pretend to have heard of me. They are false from beginning to end."