This was a surprise, and for some reasons it was a most disagreeable one. Of course Joe Wayring and his chums were not sorry that their old enemy, Matt Coyle, had escaped with his life when the canvas canoe was snagged and sunk in Indian River, but they were sorry that they had stumbled upon him in this unexpected way. Beyond a doubt Matt's failure to make himself master of the six thousand dollars that had been stolen from the Irvington bank, taken in connection with the loss of all his worldly goods and the imprisonment of his wife and boys, had had an effect upon him, and if such a thing were possible, Matt hated Joe and his friends with greatly increased hatred. The fact that the boys were in no way to blame for his misfortunes would not make the least difference to Matt Coyle. His bad luck began on the very day he made
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 the acquaintance of the Wayring family, he looked upon Joe as his evil genius, and the young wheelmen knew well enough that unless they got out of the Glen's Falls neighborhood before Matt learned they were there, they would surely find themselves in trouble of some sort.
"His whole name is Matt Coyle," repeated Daily. "He was the best guide, boatman and hunter down the Injun Lake way, but for some reason or other the rest of the men who were in that business didn't take to him, and so they clubbed together and drove him out. That wouldn't have been so very hard on Matt, for Ameriky is a tolerable big country and there's plenty of places for a guide and hunter to go; but they had to go and smash up everything he had so't he couldn't stay. They even took all his money and his rifle and clothes away from him, and turned him out to starve. He made his way up here by accident, and he's been living with us ever since. He's a good chap, and when he told me his story, I said to him that if I was in his place, I wouldn't sleep sound till every man and boy who had had a hand in mistreating me was burned outen
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 house and home. Why, he lost six thousand dollars in hard money, Matt did; all the savings of years of honest work."
"But he knows a way to get it all back and more too," said one of Dave's partners. "We expect him home with some of the boys to-day, and when he comes we'll all be rich."
"Spence, you talk too much for a little man," said Dave, sternly. "Matt won't take it kind of you telling all his secrets. He warned us all not to say anything about it."
"Fellows, we must be going," exclaimed Joe. "I know that everything these men have to say is full of interest, but listening to stories will not take us to our journey's end. By the way, how far is the railroad from here? I mean the one that runs through Dorchester?"
"Fifteen miles, or such a matter," answered Daily. "But you couldn't never get there. The woods is so thick you couldn't take them wagons through. Your best plan is to stick to the road. Where did you say you was going to stop to-night?"
"If we stay here much longer we'll have to
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 stop in town," replied Joe. "We don't want to do that, so we shall keep going and get as close to a level country as we can before the dark overtakes us. Good-by."
This was a moment that all the boys had been looking forward to with many misgivings. Would Daily and his men permit them to leave when they got ready? was a question that had often shaped itself in their minds, and which would now be answered in a very few seconds. To their immense relief the men who had been ready to shoot them half an hour before, showed no disposition to molest them or their property. They might be thieves and law-breakers, but they were not highwaymen. They said "So-long" very cordially, and saw the boys mount and ride away.
"Now here's a mess, or will be if we don't make the best time we know how before night comes," said Arthur, when the first turn in the road took them out of sight of Dave Daily and his friends. "I don't know when I have been more astounded than I was when that outlaw pronounced Matt Coyle's name."
"Didn't that juryman say that he believed
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 Matt would some day turn up alive and as full of mischief as ever?" said Roy Sheldon. "And didn't we say that the Glen's Falls neighborhood would be just the place for him if he were on deck? Well, he's here. He must have had a time of it tramping all the way from Sherwin's Pond through the woods. But then I suppose he is used to such things."
"He is at home wherever night overtakes him," said Arthur. "But I shouldn't think he would stick to the woods when there were so many roads handy."
"Wouldn't he want to keep out of sight of the officers who were looking for the money he was known to have in his possession? So those six thousand dollars were the fruits of his honest toil, were they? And Matt was the best guide, boatman, and hunter in the Indian Lake country? That's news to me."
"It's news to all of us," answered Joe; "but, to my notion, there's worse behind it. Where has Matt been with those men who are going to make the Buster band rich when they return?"
"That's so," exclaimed Arthur. "Where
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 has he? I noticed you inquired the distance to the railroad, and that made me think you were disturbed by the same suspicions I was. Do you believe Matt and his crowd were down there, and that they had anything to do with the rock we found on the track?"
"I don't know what else to think," replied Joe. "It was the way those men acted rather than what they said that aroused my suspicions. Matt has been rich once, that is to say, he has had the handling of more money than he will ever make by his own labor, and isn't it natural to suppose that when he lost it he set his wits at work to conjure up some plan to get more? A man who will do the things Matt Coyle has done and threatened, will do worse if he gets the chance. It's time that fellow was shut up. The next time he tries to wreck a train he may be successful."
This was all the boys had to say on the subject, but it was easy enough to see that they had resolved to put an officer on the squatter's track at the first opportunity. But then there was Tom Bigden, with whose doings I was by this time pretty well acquainted. Would
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 they want him disgraced by the revelations Matt would be sure to make if he were brought before a court to be tried for his crimes? As Roy Sheldon afterward remarked, a big load would have been taken off Tom Bigden's shoulders if Matt Coyle had never been born.
As soon as Daily and his men had been left out of sight Arthur Hastings began making the pace; and he made it so rapid that scarcely twenty minutes elapsed before they passed through an open gate and drew up before the back door of Mr. Holmes's house. They knew it when they saw it; and as they looked at all the evidences of thrift and comfort with which it was surrounded, they wished most heartily that Daily and all the rest of the Buster band might be brought to justice and that speedily.
"Boys, we'll not put this fine property in jeopardy by stopping here," said Joe, in a low tone. "We'd be worse than heathen if we did, and Mr. Holmes ought to kick us off the place for hinting at such a thing. Good-evening, sir," he added, touching his cap to a gray-headed man in his shirt sleeves who just then came around the corner with a bucket of water
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 in his hand. "Have you a pitcher of milk to spare, and can you give us a good big lunch to eat along the way?"
"Oh, yes, I can do that," replied the man, whose countenance grew clouded when he saw the boys getting off their wheels, but brightened again at once when he learned that they did not intend to ask him for lodgings. "Plenty of milk and provender to spare, but no beds made up."
"Mr. Holmes, we understand you perfectly," Joe hastened to reply. "We know just how you are situated, we sympathize with you, and we wouldn't stay in your house to-night if we knew your doors were open to us. We met Daily up the road a piece."
"You did?" exclaimed Mr. Holmes. "And did you tell him you were going to stop here?"
"We simply told him we should stop somewhere in town long enough to buy a glass of milk or beg a drink of water, and he raised no objection to it. I think you ought to know that Matt Coyle's dogs have been on the warpath again, and you have lost another sheep. Daily said it was in your mark."
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"That's too bad; too bad," said the old man, who had long ago ceased to hope for better times. "If they keep on they will kill all my stock. The members of the Buster band don't always go into the woods after meat now. The pastures are handier, and a sheep, calf, or nice young heifer is easier to shoot than deer. We can't prove anything against them, and are afraid to prosecute if we could."
"Those dogs will never kill any more sheep for you," said Roy. "They wouldn't give us the road and we shot them. They're deader than herrings."
I noticed that Roy always said "we" when speaking of this little circumstance. If anything unpleasant grew out of it, he did not mean that his friend Arthur should bear all the blame or take all the punishment. Mr. Holmes's face grew bright again, but he showed a little anxiety when he asked:
"Did Daily see you do it, or does he know anything about it? Then I am surprised that he didn't make you pay for the dogs. Say," he went on, in a more guarded tone, "where are you going to stop to night?"
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Joe answered that they intended to camp in the woods, and hoped he could furnish them grub enough for supper and breakfast the next morning.
"Of course I'll do that," said Mr. Holmes. "But take my advice and don't light a fire. The owner of the dogs you shot is a savage. He gets around at night as well as in the day-time, and since he came here last fall, he has put more mischief into the Buster band than they ever had in them before, and that was quite unnecessary. They never thought of shooting stock for their own use before he went among them, but they often do it now. They seem to take delight in breaking open every door that is fastened of nights, no matter whether they want to steal anything or not. I'd give something to know positively what that man Coyle intended to do with the spades, crowbar and axes he took out of my tool-house the other night."
"What do you think he meant to do with them?" inquired Arthur, who thought from the way the man spoke that he had his suspicions.
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"I'm almost afraid to speak it out loud, for it don't seem possible that any man can be so wicked," replied Mr. Holmes. "The lawless acts of the Buster band have driven nearly everything away from us, but we've got the post-office left, and last night I got my weekly papers out of it. In one of them I read that a terrible railroad accident had been averted by the coolness and courage of a wheelman who rode across a trestle in the dark to warn the engineer of an approaching train that there was a rock on the track."
"He rode over a trestle in the dark?" exclaimed Roy, who, impatient as he was to hear what else Mr. Holmes had to say, could not resist the temptation to torment Joe Wayring. "Now that's what I call pluck."
"That is what the papers call it too,"............