Before this happened Matt Coyle's wife and boys had been shut up in the New London jail to await their trial, which was to come off as soon as Matt himself had been arrested. The truth of the matter was, the Indian Lake guides were so incensed at Matt for his daring and persistent efforts to break up their business and to ruin the two hotels at the lake, that they threatened to make short work of him and all his worthless tribe; and as the guides were men who never said a thing of this sort unless they meant it, the authorities were of opinion that the old woman and the boys would be safer in the New London lock-up than they would be if confined in the tumble-down calaboose at Irvington. But now it appeared that Matt Coyle could not be arrested and brought to trial, for the good and sufficient reason that he was dead. He was drowned when the canvas canoe was snagged and sunk.
Joe Wayring and his chums declared, from the first, that if the squatter had attempted to run out of the river into Sherwin's Pond during the freshet that prevailed at the time of his flight, he had surely come to grief. If three strong boys, who were expert with the oars, could not pull a light skiff against the current that ran out of the pond, how could Matt Coyle hope to stem it in a heavily-loaded canoe and with a single paddle? If he had been foolish enough to try it, he would never be heard of again until his body was picked up somewhere in the neighborhood of the State hatchery. The finding of the canoe and his valuable cargo at the bottom of the river led others to Joe's way of thinking, and it was finally conceded on all hands that the squatter would never again rob unguarded camps, or renew his attempts to "break up the business of guiding." Nothing remained, then, but to remove his wife and boys to Irvington and hold them for trial at the next term of the circuit court. The grand jury first took the matter in hand, and Joe Wayring and his chums, much to their disgust, were summoned to appear before it as witnesses.
When Tom Bigden and his cousins, Loren and Ralph Farnsworth, heard of that, they shook in their boots. And well they might; for, as you know, Tom was accessory to some of Matt's violations of the law. More than that, rumor said that the old woman had told all she knew, and that she had even gone so far as to assure the officers of the Irvington Bank that she and her family would not have been half so bad as they were, if one Tom Bigden had not advised and urged them to commit crime.
"It's all over with me, boys," groaned Tom, when one of his school-fellows incidentally remarked in his hearing that he had seen Joe Wayring and his two friends take the train for Irvington that morning to testify before the grand jury. "You know Joe is jealous of me and that he will do anything he can to injure me."
"Well," said Ralph, plunging his hands deep into his pockets and looking thoughtfully at the ground, "what would you do to a fellow who was the means of having you tied to a tree with a fair prospect of a good beating with hickory switches on your bare back? Would you be friendly to him or feel like shielding him from punishment?"
"But I didn't tell Matt to tie Joe Wayring to a tree and thrash him," retorted Tom. "I never thought of such a thing."
"I didn't say you did," replied Ralph. "I said you were the cause of it, and so you were; for you told Matt that you had seen the valises that contained the six thousand stolen dollars in Joe's camp-basket."
"Matt was a fool to believe it," said Loren. "One little camp-basket wouldn't hold both those gripsacks."
"That doesn't alter the facts of the case," answered Ralph. "Matt did believe the story, ridiculous as it was, and Tom's fate is in the hands of a boy whom we have abused and bothered in all possible ways ever since we have been here."
"And we didn't have the slightest reason or excuse for it," added Loren.