nd to see through
things long before the answer became apparent to his chums. If this
were so, at least he did not venture to say anything to them about it.

By now all of them, save slow-poke Landy, had arrived at the tree.
They could hear the alarmed turkeys making some twittering sounds
above, but if any of them had flown off the rest remained on their
roosts.

Johnny had been smart enough to fetch his lantern along. This he now
proceeded to light, and as soon as the wick took fire he began to
examine the trap.

"Dog-gone the luck, she went and broke on me!" he wailed, as though his
boyish heart were almost broken by the catastrophe.

"That's what comes of not testing things before-hand!" said Toby, with
the air of a wise-acre who knew it all; and yet Toby was himself a most
notorious offender along those very same lines, as his chums could have
informed the bound boy had they chosen to give a fellow-scout away.

"Gee whiz! he did test it, Toby," said Lil Artha, indignantly; "didn't
we all of us see him ahangin' head-down. There's some sort of a
mystery about it, that's what."

"Not much," said Elmer, who, while the others were talking, had been
examining the end of the rope that lay on the ground near by; "it's
been cut, that's all."

"Cut with a knife d'ye mean, Elmer?" cried Johnny, aghast.

"Just what it has," continued the patrol leader firmly; "you can see
that with one eye, for the edges are smooth, and not ragged as they
would be if the rope had broken a strand at a time."

Every fellow had to push up and examine it to make sure, and there was
no dissenting voice after that. They knew Elmer was right, as he very
nearly always appeared to be in matters like this.

"But say, however could he have twisted up to get at the rope while he
was hanging here by one leg, I'd like to know?" demanded Landy.

"Mebbe the second thief helped him git loose," suggested the bound boy.

"Just what happened as sure as anything," assented Elmer. "They were
too smart for you that time, Johnny. Instead of running away when the
alarm went off, this second fellow whipped out his blade, and finding
the rope where it ran from the tree, he cut it."

"Then the other dropped down, and got his legs loose," added Toby.
"See, here's the loop lying on the ground."

Sure enough, it was just as he said. The loop was there in plain
sight, just as it had apparently been hurled aside by the trapped thief
after he had a chan