"I do not think so," she declared. "I do not remember seeing any rope like that around the house."
They scrutinized the pieces carefully.
"Look at these frayed edges," said Frank, laying them together. "You see that these two pieces were part of one rope."
"I'll tell you what that means," put in Billy. "The girl says that Tom was bound with ropes. That cut or broken one was the one that was used to tie his hands. In some way he cut that. He didn't have a knife or the cut would be cleaner. Perhaps he sawed the rope against a piece of glass that he might have managed to get near."
"Good guess," commended Bart. "And this long rope was the one that was used to tie his feet. Tom didn't need to cut that for his hands were free then and he could untie it."
"Good old scout!" exclaimed Frank in tribute to his absent chum. "Trust that stout heart of his to keep up the fight to the last minute. Think of the old boy sawing away at the rope when he didn't know what minute he'd be taken out and hanged."
"He's all wool and a yard wide," agreed Bart.
"The real goods," said Billy. "But what were the ropes doing out here in the grass?"
"Oh, I suppose he hated them so that he chucked them as far away as he could," suggested Bart.
"No," said Frank, measuring the window with his eye. "I'll tell you how I think it was. Tom knew, of course, that he couldn't get out of the house by the downstairs way without being nabbed. He didn't know, of course, that the bunch of Huns weren't in condition to nab anybody. So the window was the only way left to him. He took the ropes to the window with the idea of splicing them and climbing down by them. But that would have taken time, and when he saw that the window wasn't very high up he made up his mind to drop. The ropes were in his hand and he simply threw them out of the window as the easiest way of getting rid of them."