“Then I’ll bet it’s one of those Bolgers. See, we’re right at the end of their lot. You know they pelted you once before?”
“I know that,” admitted Dave, “but I don’t see or hear anything of them just now.”
“Oh, they’d lay in ambush in that brush yonder all night to play a trick on either of us,” insisted Ned.
The Bolgers were a family crowd very numerous and troublesome. They had often pestered Dave in the past, and, aroused by the suggestion of his comrade, Dave walked back the road a dozen feet or so, peering sharply into the straggly brush lining it.
“What is it, Dave?” inquired Ned, as his friend uttered a quick cry. He noticed that Dave had come to a short stop and was stooping over in the road.
“My foot kicked something,” explained Dave, groping about. “Why, I wonder what this is?”
“What?” put in Ned curiously.
“It’s a bundle of some kind.”
“Why, yes,” added Ned, peering sharply at the object in Dave’s hand. “It looks like a rolled-up sweater.”
“Some one must have dropped it from a wagon,” said Dave. “There’s something else here than a sweater, though.”