Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/422

 "You fellows spread ink a trifle too freely while we were in Plymouth. If I had suspected it, I would have dropped the pair of you over the end of the pier like a couple of kittens."

"Perhaps that wouldn't have been so easy, either," replied Arthur. "More than twenty days' steady wheeling has brought us a tolerable muscle, I want you to remember. But what's the odds? It was bound to come out, and Roy and I kept still about it until we were homeward bound. When you write all you've got to do is to tell Uncle Joe we're coming."

Joe wrote that very night, and his letter contained a complete history of Roy's doings in New London harbor, and told how Arthur had come near getting them into serious trouble by shooting Matt Coyle's watch-dogs. He omitted nothing, and when he finished, he flattered himself that he had described the thing in language so graphic that Roy and Arthur would be invited to expedite their return.

The next time they came up with their letters, they also found papers containing some