Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/411

 was utterly destroyed. His scow was not forgotten. They would knock it out of all semblance to a boat when they went back to the creek.

Having started a roaring fire, they were obliged to stay and see it burn itself out, for they dared not leave it for fear that it might set the woods aflame. So they stood around and saw it blaze, grumbling the while over the ill luck that had attended their efforts to capture the cunning squatter, and it was fully three-quarters of an hour before Mr. Swan thought it safe to return to the boats. This delay gave Matt Coyle plenty of time in which to carry out a very neat piece of villainy, some of which I saw, and all of which I heard.

While the scenes I have just described were being enacted in the clearing, there were lively times in the little bay of which I have spoken. You know we were left in company with Matt's scow, the boat in which I rode being drawn up on the bank on one side of him and Mr. Swan's on the other; and no sooner had the hunting party disappeared in the bushes, than we began reviling him the best we knew how.