Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/305

 once more. Why, have you any idea what that villain meant to do? He was going to make a pirate of me. He intended, first, to offer himself as guide for the hotels, and if they wouldn't take him, he intended to follow the guests and their guides along the water courses, and rob every camp that he found unprotected. That's the kind of fellow Matt Coyle is. He ought to be abolished."

"What became of the fishing-rods he stole at the time he ran off with you?"

"Well, they had worse treatment than I did, because they were not as useful as I was. They have been left out in the rain and abused in various ways, until they don't look much as they did when the squatter first got his ugly hands upon them. I doubt very much if their owners would have recognized them if they could have seen them the last time I did."

"Will our trip to Indian Lake last all summer?" I asked.

"Oh, no; only about two weeks. After that, we shall be packed off on a long journey, either East or West, I don't know which, and neither did Joe the last time I heard him say any