Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/339

 found that it was going to be a task to read it at all, for the paper had been so often and so roughly handled that in some places the words were quite obliterated. The poem, if that was the right name for the chief law-breaker's effusion, was nearly a column in length, and it required no little effort on Roy's part to make out the first two verses of it. They ran as follows:

"What was the reason the wardens dared not go there?" inquired Arthur, when Roy handed back the paper declaring that the letters were so dim he could not make sense