Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/212

 of hearing. "I don't mind my own loss, but I am really sorry for Joe Wayring."

"So am I," said Loren. "He prized that canoe very highly. I believe he would rather have lost his handsome breech-loader. I tell you we made a mistake in having any thing to do with George Prime. Wayring and his crowd are much the better lot of fellows."

These remarks settled one thing to Tom Bigden's satisfaction. Ever since his interview with the squatter he had been asking himself whether or not he ought to take his cousins into his confidence, and now he knew that he had better not. He was afraid, as well as ashamed, to show them how far his unreasonable enmity toward Joe Wayring had led him, and so he said nothing.

Great was the indignation among some of the Mount Airy people when it became known that Matt Coyle had turned up again when he was least expected, and that he had walked off with a hundred and fifty dollars worth of property that did not belong to him. But Mount Airy, as we have seen, was like other places in that it numbered among its inhabitants certain