“That’s just what I did.”
“You did! Why?”
Without replying directly, Tom came in, sat down, and leaning his elbows on the table, said, with a quiet chuckle, the meaning of which we could not understand:
“Should you like to know, boys, what Yetmore did when he came down for his tobacco this morning? He went to the stable, saddled his horse, untied your two ponies and led them out. Then he mounted his horse and taking the halter-ropes in his hand he led your ponies by a roundabout way through the woods down to the road. After leading them at a walk along the road for half a mile he dismounted—that was where his tracks showed—and either took off the halters and threw them away, or what is more likely, tied them up around the ponies’ necks so that they shouldn’t step on them. Then he mounted again and went off at a gallop, driving your ponies ahead of him.”
As Tom concluded, he leaned back in his chair, bubbling with suppressed merriment, until the sight of our round-eyed wonder was too much for him and he burst into uproarious laughter, which was so infectious that we could not help joining in, though the cause of it was a perfect mystery to us both.
At length, when he had laughed himself out, he leaned forward again, and rubbing the tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand, he said:
“Can’t you guess, boys, why Yetmore has gone off with your horses?”
I shook my head. “No,” said I, “unless he wants to steal them, and he’d hardly do that, I suppose.”
“No; anyhow not in such a bare-faced way as that. What he’s after is to make you boys walk home.”