et up a yelp to show where we were
hiding."

Just then, the deputy, who had been sitting on a log to recover his
breath, managed to inquire:

"What have you done with your partners?"

"There were only two of us, and the other man has gone off that way,"
answered the captive, nodding his head toward an indefinite point of the
compass.

Tom Hallet had no further interest in the hunt. He stood by and watched
the officer as he unbound the prisoner and substituted a pair of
hand-cuffs for the rope with which his arms had been confined, and when
Brierly's party started off with their captive, Tom fell in behind them.

He went as straight to his cabin as he could go, and there he found Bob
Emerson, who was rummaging around in the hope of finding something to
eat.

"I haven't had a bite of anything since last night, and you'd better
believe that I am hungry," said Bob, after he and Tom had greeted each
other as though they had been separated for years. "But I am not a bit
of a hero. I haven't had an adventure worth the telling."

"There's nothing in there," said Tom, seeing that his friend was casting
longing eyes toward his game-bag. "I didn't take much of a lunch with
me, and I was hungry enough to eat it all. Can you stand it until we get
home?"

"I'll have to," replied Bob. "By-the-way, did you ever see that before?"

As he spoke, he put his hand into his pocket and drew out a soiled and
crumpled letter, which looked as though it might have been through the
war.

It was the same precious document that he and Tom had left in Silas
Morgan's wood-pile.

"One of the robbers gave it to me last night," continued Bob, in reply
to his companion's inquiring look. "You will remember that Dan Morgan
lost the letter within a few feet of the log on which he sat when he
read it, and that when he and Silas went back to find it, they were
frightened away by something that dodged into the bushes before they
could get a sight at it, and which they took to be a ghost. Well, it
wasn't a ghost at all, but one of the thieves, who had been to the Beach
after supplies. He found the letter, and read it. Of course he was
greatly alarmed, and so was his companion; for they couldn't help
believing that some one had got wind of their hiding-place. They could
hardly believe me when I told them that you and I made that letter up
out of the whole cloth, and that we never dreamed there was any one
living in the gorge."

"But we did know it