"That's the price; but you owed me just four times seventy-five cents before you got these last three. There's your bill!" Tom opened his eyes when he heard this. He picked up the paper that Prime tossed upon the show-case before him, and saw that, if the figures on it told the truth, he had smoked much oftener than he supposed. "George," said he, as soon as he could speak, "I don't owe you three dollars." "You owe me three dollars and a quarter, counting in the three you just got," was Prime's reply. "I say I don't; and what's more to the point, I won't pay it. If you want to impose upon somebody and make him pay for cigars that you have smoked yourself, try some one else. You can't come it over me." "You mean to repudiate your honest debts, do you?" said Prime hotly. "Well, I don't know that I ought to have expected anything else of you. A fellow who will associate with tramps and thieves, as you have done ever since you poked your meddlesome nose into Mount Airy, is capable of anything." "Look here," said Tom, his face growing red and pale by turns. "Step out from behind the counter and say that again, will you?" "I can talk just as well from where I stand," was Prime's answer; and then he clenched one of his hands and pounded lightly upon the top of the show-case while he looked fixedly at Tom. "Perhaps you think because you were in the woods when these things happened that the folks in Mount Airy don't know all about them," he went on. "What things?" Tom managed to ask, while Ralph and Loren nerved themselves for what was coming. "What things!" repeated Prime, in a tone that almost drove Tom frantic. "Don't you suppose I know as well as you do that when Matt Coyle stole Joe Wayring's canvas canoe a year ago last summer, he did it with your knowledge and consent? I will say more than that. You urged him to take it." "Why--why, you--" Tom began, and then he paused. There was a look on Prime's face which told him that there was more behind; and now that he was in for it, Tom thought it would be a good plan to find out just how much the Mount Airy people knew of his dealings with the squatter. "It has all come out on you," continued Prime. "And I know, too, that it was through the information you gave him that Matt followed Wayring to No-Man's Pond and committed that assault upon him." "The idea!" exclaimed Tom, trying to look surprised, though inwardly he quaked with fear. "I never told Matt to follow Joe Wayring to No-Man's Pond. I never saw him while I was in the woods,--did I, boys?" he added, appealing to his cousins. "I know a story worth half a dozen of that," said the clerk, before either Ralph or Loren could collect their wits for a reply. "Some of the sportsmen who were stopping at one of the Indian Lake hotels saw you wait for him at a certain place for more than an hour; and when at last Matt arrived, you held quite a lengthy consultation with him."