“Thank goodness you’re better, Tom,” he cried, hastening toward his chum, for he had ascertained that Duke and his cronies were only insensible and probably would recover possession of their faculties shortly.
Pending this time, Jack had bound their hands and feet securely with some light rope he had found on a fence near the barn.
“What’s happened?” gasped Tom, gazing about him in the glow of the flaming barn. “What’s on fire? Where are we?”
“Not a hundred yards from where we stopped the machine, Tom. Those rascals lying bound yonder knocked you insensible and overpowered me. They had found out about the money in our shoes. By the way, one of them is our old friend Duke.”
“Gracious! Adam Duke?”
“The same.”
“But how did he come to be here?”
“Struck by lightning like that barn was, and like I was, I guess.”
“No; but I mean how did he come to be at the place he was when we were attacked?”
“The old fox saw us draw our money and drove ahead of us to this lonely place in a machine that belongs to a workshop that employs him.”