to bring you here, to the
protection of your friends. If Nestor had been at the cottage we might
have explained the situation to him. What time did he leave?"

"Don't you know what time he left, and why he went?" demanded Frank, all
his former suspicions returning.

"We only know that he was not there at daybreak," was the reply, "and so
we brought you away. Why did he leave so suddenly?"

Frank looked the Colonel in the eyes unflinchingly, determined to have the
truth out of him, and asked:

"And so you don't know where he is now?"

The Colonel did not reply, and Frank knew that there was no necessity for
continuing the conversation. He was satisfied that the Colonel was one of
the plotters, perhaps the leader, that Ned's departure from the cottage
had not been detected by the man he had followed into the jungle, and that
his friend, at least up to daybreak, had not fallen into the hands of the
enemy.

He saw in an instant how the case stood. The plotters, spying about the
cottage at daybreak, had noted the absence of Ned. Fearful that he had
departed on some errand which might seriously affect their own interests,
they had resolved to bring the others away and learn from them, if
possible, where Ned had gone.

As the reader has doubtless suspected, this was the exact truth. The
plotters, at the time the boys were taken from the cottage, did not know
where Ned was. He had not been seen following the would-be murderer, nor
had any information from the bomb-boom disclosed his presence there.

Colonel Sharrow had regarded the "pumping" of the boy as certain of
success, and was not a little surprised when he failed to go into the
details of the incident which had taken Ned and Jimmie away from the
cottage. It had seemed certain to him that the boy would hasten into an
excited account of the peril of the situation. He did not know how the
bomb had been discovered, or how it had been taken from under the floor of
the cottage, but he knew that it had been done.

He had depended upon Frank to tell him all about it, and to explain where
Ned had gone and why he had left the cottage in the night. He was greatly
worried over the disappearance of the boy, for he did not know what had
been discovered regarding the attempted destruction of the cottage and the
consequent murder of the boys. He did not know what steps Ned might be
taking to discover the author of the attempted outrage of the previous
night. Besides, he was cu