“Non! Not by a whole lot!”
The angry, half choked cry was from old Joe Picquet. Beside himself with fury at the thought of the cunning fraud the man had worked upon them, he flung himself forward as if he meant to tear him to pieces.
Tom’s arm jerked him back.
“Don’t do anything like that, Joe,” he counseled; and then to the gray man, “I suppose your sickness was just a dodge to keep us here till your companions could arrive.”
“Just what it was, my young friend,” amiably agreed the rascal. “As a guesser of motives you are very good—very good, indeed.”
One of the new arrivals stepped forward and whispered something to his leader, who nodded. Then he spoke:
“Of course, I shall have to ask you to give up your weapons,” he said.
Old Joe Picquet fumed and fussed, but there was nothing for it but to obey. In the presence of such a force, and with the disadvantage under which they labored, there was nothing else to be done. With the best grace they could, they gave up their weapons, which the little gray man, with a smile of satisfaction, took into his possession.
“Pity you didn’t heed the ghostly warning I gave you,” said he to the boys, with a grin, “you’d be in a better position than you are now. But after all, it will teach you never again to interfere with the Wolf.”
They had nothing to reply to this speech; but at the rascal’s next words their anger broke out afresh.