“I never knew Luke to be away from home before, and here he is thirty miles from Cobham’s Corner,” murmured Dick. “There’s something queer about it.”
The cold night wind whisking about the building soon made the young watcher’s position one of discomfort.
“They act as if they intended to stay a while,” he said to himself. “I’d like to discover what their intentions are.”
Dick thought a moment; then he went round to a door which he knew opened on an entry that communicated with the kitchen.
He removed his shoes and cautiously entered the house.
The door at the end of the entry leading into the kitchen was partly open, and through this door the boy plainly heard the sound of conversation.
He tiptoed his way to the door, and through the crack between the upper and lower hinges he got a good view of the intruders.
As the trio spoke in their ordinary tones, Dick heard every word they said.
“I didn’t agree to go into any such thing as this when I left home,” said Luke, in a tone of plain remonstrance.
“It ain’t what you agreed to do; it’s what you got to do, now you’re with us,” spoke up the whiskered man, with a fierce glance at the storekeeper’s son, evidently bent on intimidating him.