w you the spot over
there, in the thicket between the two clumps of bushes. Well,
I had gotten this far when I saw the missing steaks. They rested
on a tin pan on the ground in the thicket. It looked as though
the thief of our supper had gone away to get water or something.
I had just stepped, on tiptoe, of course, past this tree when
I heard a soft step behind me. Before I could turn, the noose
was dropped over my head, and then down on my neck. It was jerked
tight, like a flash, and I was pulled against this tree. The
fellow took some kind of hitch around the trunk of the tree to
hold me-----"

"Yes; I see the hitch," assented Dick. "It was well done."

"So well done that it held me, for a moment," Dave went on. "The
noose choked me, for a brief space, so that I didn't have much
presence of mind. Before I recovered myself, the fellow had passed
the rope several times around my body and arms, and had taken
the extra loops on my arms. By that time I was so helpless that
I couldn't stir to free myself."

"And you didn't see the fellow?" asked Dick.

"Not a glimpse of him. He worked from behind, and did his trick
like lightning."

"But there are no steaks, nor any plate, on the ground in the
thicket now," Reade reported, after looking.

"No," Darry grunted. "The fellow who tried me up like this passed
over my eyes a dirty cloth that perhaps he would call a handkerchief.
Then I heard him over by the thicket. Next he was back here
and had whisked that cloth away from my eyes. That was the last
I heard of him."

"Why didn't you set up a roar as soon as he attacked you?" demanded
Tom Reade.

"The noose bound my throat so tightly, I couldn't," Darry explained.
"I was seeing stars, and I was dizzy. After he had taken a few
hitches of the rope around me he eased up on the noose a bit."

"Did you 'holler' then?" questioned Dick.

"No," Dave Darrin admitted honestly. "I used up all my breath
telling that unknown, unseen fellow just what I thought of him."

"If you want to know what I think of the fellow," uttered young
Prescott, "it seems to me that the unknown chap is clever and
bright enough to be capable of better things than stealing supper
from other people. This tie-up is about the most ingenious thing
I've seen in a long time."

"Maybe I'd appreciate it more," retorted Darry, "if I could see
it as you do, on another fellow. Are you going to hurry up and
cut away this rope?"

"Not if you