“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,” said Tom. “Of course we did after they frightened us, but not before. They spoke about that, too. We took them completely by surprise the day we came down the gorge. We were close upon their camp before they knew it, and for a minute or two they didn’t know what to do. Then one of them conceived the idea of making that hideous noise, and when the other saw how well it worked, he joined in with him.” “But didn’t they know that we would be back sooner or later to look into the matter?” asked Tom. “Of course they did, and that was another thing that frightened them. They saw very plainly that their hiding-place was broken up, and were making preparations to leave it when Silas and Dan put in their appearance. The robbers saw and heard them long before they got to the camp, and the one who found the letter recognized them at once. It was at his suggestion that that ghost was rigged up.” “But they must have known that they could not scare everybody with that dummy,” observed Tom.