PETER COTTERELL’S TREASURE

Tom Hallett lived in an old town on the Atlantic seaboard, a port of New Hampshire that was wedged in between the rocky coast of Maine and the sandy beaches of Massachusetts. If he crossed the broad river to the north, the beautiful Pesumpscot, by the old toll-bridge that seemed as ancient as the town itself, he came into the Pine Tree State. If he sailed to the south, he had not far to go before he reached Cape Ann. Back of him, to the west, lay the foothills of the White Mountains, and he had often tramped far enough in that direction to see the noble outline of Mount Washington rise grandly against the sky. In front—for people who live along the seacoast always think of the ocean as being at their front door—was the harbor of Barmouth, a wide semi-circle, its two horns sticking way out to the east, its broad bosom dotted with many islands. Once Barmouth town had sent many ships to sea, merchantmen to the West Indies, around Cape Horn, to the fabled lands of India and China, fishing fleets to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, whalers to the Arctic; now, however, ships were not so plentiful, sails had given place to steam, and the young men stayed ashore to make their living rather than seek the rigors and gales that were a part of the toll exacted by Father Neptune.

Tom Hallett’s house had the cupola on top of its roof that told of the old sailing days, the “widow’s watch,” as it was commonly called, for from there the wives of sailors used to watch for the first sign of homebound sails. His grandfather had been a sea-captain, and the house was full of the treasures he had collected. Many a time Tom and his older sister Milly had listened to the amazing yarns the weatherbeaten mariner had spun by the winter fire.

Barmouth was an excellent place for a boy to live. There was plenty of lawn around most of the houses, the streets were wide and well-shaded, open country was near enough to be reached by a ten-minute walk. There was coasting and skating in winter—all that one could wish—and the ponds that rang with the music of steel runners in January were swimming-holes in July and tempting places to fish. And there was always the harbor and the wind from the sea, calling young sailors to launch their dories and try their skill over the rippling waves.

Tom was sixteen that summer, and wanted something to do—something a little different from his usual holiday jaunts. He told his father about it, and his father said he would think the matter over. And then one evening, as Tom was leaning on the garden gate, wishing that some adventure would come his way, he found himself addressed by a stranger.

“Do you know of a young fellow out of a job?” said the stranger. “A likely young fellow, who doesn’t mind roughing it?”

Tom regarded the man. The latter was tall and spare, and wore big, horn-rimmed spectacles that gave him the look of a wise and thoughtful owl.

“Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t,” Tom answered, copying the cautious words and tone of voice that he had often heard his uncle Samuel Jordan, who was a lawyer, use when he was asked questions.

“You’re Yankee through and through, aren’t you?” said the man. “You don’t want to commit yourself to anything definite until you know all the facts. I don’t suppose I could interest you in buying a calico horse until you’d got out a pail of water and soap and a scrubbing brush to see if the spots would wash off.”

Tom laughed; the stranger looked so extremely solemn in his big glasses, and yet his tone indicated a joke. “Even if the spots didn’t wash off I’m not sure you could interest me in that horse,” he retorted. “I don’t see how I could use him just now.”

“Well, he’s not for sale, my friend. I need him out on the old farm in Illinois, where I come from.” The man stroked his chin while he regarded Tom reflectively. “I’m looking for a young and able seaman, for to tell you the truth, I don’t know much about salt water. I provide the grub and the boat and whatever else is needed, and the sailorman provides the lore of the sea.”

Tom’s interest was aroused. If this stranger really wanted a sailor to help him with a boat it seemed odd that he should be seeking information from a young fellow lounging on a gate in one of the quiet, elm-shaded streets of Barmouth. It would have been much more natural to look for such information along the waterfront, at some of the docks or piers. “Why don’t you hunt up one of the captains?” Tom suggested. “They might know just the man for you.”

“I don’t want a man,” was the answer. “I want a likely young fellow, someone about your age and general cut of jib—that’s the right seafaring expression, isn’t it? I’ve got an adventure on hand, and I want company. I wouldn’t mind two, or even three, young fellows, if they were the right kind.”

An adventure! Tom pricked up his ears. The man was certainly interesting, he would like to know more about him. “Where are you going to sail, and how long would you be away?” he questioned.

“My cruise will probably be limited to the islands in Barmouth Harbor, and we’d be away anywhere from a week to a month.”

“Well,” began Tom, “I don’t know——”

“Neither do I,” said the stranger, with a grin. “There are a number of things I don’t know about this adventure. But then the main point about an adventure is that we can’t tell everything about it in advance. Isn’t that so?”

“I suppose it is,” Tom granted. And after a moment’s thought he added, “I know my way round the harbor pretty well, and I can sail a dory, and I’ve got a couple of friends——”

“Fine!” declared the man. “Do you know, it may seem odd to you, but as I came along the street and my eyes lighted on you, I said to myself, ‘that’s precisely the type of messmate I’m looking for; an upstanding fellow, with a good head on his shoulders.’”

Naturally Tom felt pleased. He straightened up and stuck his hands in his pockets. “The only thing I don’t understand,” he said, “is how you expect to find a real adventure in the harbor. Of course we could cruise around, and fish and swim. Is that what you had in mind?”

“Did you ever hear of Cotterell’s Island?” The stranger lowered his voice.

Tom nodded. “Of course I have. We call it Crusty Christopher’s Island around here.”

“Have you ever been on it?”

“No,” Tom was forced to admit. “The man who lives there won’t let any one land. He’s put up signs warning people off and he keeps watch-dogs.”

“The island belongs to me,” announced the stranger, “and I’m going to camp out on it.”

Tom stared at the man in surprise. “But surely you’re not Crusty Christopher!” he exclaimed. “I always heard he was old and had a white beard.”

“Mr. Christopher Cotterell,” explained the stranger, “was my uncle; though as a matter of fact I only saw him once, when I was a small boy. He died last year and I have inherited his island and the house on it. The house has a history. I’m very much interested in old houses, and particularly in this one. My name is John Tuckerman.”

“Well,” said Tom, “that’s interesting, to be sure. I hope you don’t think I meant to call your uncle names.”

“Oh no, you didn’t offend me,” said the man promptly. “I’ve heard him called Crusty Christopher before, and I shouldn’t wonder if he deserved the nickname. There have been a number of queer characters in the Cotterell family; there was old Sir Peter Cotterell, for instance, who built that house on the island and lived there during the Revolution.”

“Sir Peter?” queried Tom. “I don’t seem to remember him.”

“He wasn’t really Sir Peter,” Mr. Tuckerman explained. “He was only plain Mr. Peter, like his neighbors in Barmouth. But he had the bad taste to side with the King of England when the colonists objected to paying taxes without being represented in the government—in other words, he was what they called a Tory—and so the people nicknamed him Sir Peter in joke. There are lots of stories I could tell you about him. I’m very much interested in history, you see.”

Tom nodded. The more he listened to this Mr. John Tuckerman the more he liked him. And yet simply to camp out on an island in the harbor, even on Cotterell’s Island, where he had never set his foot—though he had often wanted to—didn’t strike him as a very thrilling adventure.

Perhaps Mr. Tuckerman read his thought, for, lowering his voice again, he said, “There’s a mystery connected with the place; I’ve found references to it in some old family letters. And the house is full of old furniture and bric-a-brac. I can hardly wait to explore it.”

The man’s tone was undoubtedly eager, and though Tom had never felt any great interest in old furniture and such things he found his curiosity rapidly rising. An island and a house to explore—Crusty Christopher’s at that—and possibly a mystery. He might be making a great mistake if he let this adventure escape.

Mr. Tuckerman was speaking again. “I might as well explain at once that I’m a dreadful landlubber. I don’t know anything about sailing boats, and not very much about fishing. I’m afraid my education has been very much neglected along certain lines. I want to camp on that island, and I want company. Do you know how to cook—to cook the sort of things campers eat, I mean?”

“I can cook some things. But my friend David Norton can cook almost anything. He’s one of the fellows I meant.”

“It would be splendid if we could get David, too. I’d take along plenty of provisions, but one does get tired of living on canned things.”

“Ben Sully’s a corking fisherman,” said Tom. “Ben and David and I have camped out a lot together.”

“I’d like to keep the expedition as quiet as I can,” Mr. Tuckerman stated. “I don’t want a lot of curiosity-seekers poking round the island.”

“I think you’re right,” agreed Tom. “I’ll swear both of them to secrecy; except to their families, of course. You wouldn’t mind our telling our parents?”

To that John Tuckerman agreed. “This is just what I hoped to find,” he said, “some young fellows with the spirit of adventure. You know the ropes, and I don’t. Let’s see; what’s your name?”

Tom told him. “Wouldn’t you like to come in and see my father?” he suggested.

“I must be getting back to the hotel,” said Tuckerman. “You tell him my name, and say I’m Mr. Cotterell’s nephew. You sign up to go, do you? And you’ll try to get your two messmates? I’ll see to the boat and grub and cooking outfit—and I think I can promise you a bit of adventure.”

“If Father says yes, I sign,” agreed Tom, smiling at the man’s air of business. “And the more adventure there is, the better I’ll like it, too. Things are sort of quiet here this summer.”

Tuckerman held out his hand. He had a formal manner about him that amused Tom greatly. “See you at Lowe’s Wharf at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“Right,” said Tom, shaking hands. “And I’ll have the other two fellows there with me. They’ve always wanted to have a look at that island.”

The tall, lank man turned, and shortly disappeared behind the big clump of lilac bushes at the corner of Wentworth Street. Tom, thoughtfully jingling a bunch of keys in his trouser pocket, chuckled as he considered the situation. In fifteen minutes this Mr. John Tuckerman, a total stranger, had persuaded him to camp out for a fortnight or so on Crusty Christopher’s island. Tom could well believe that Mr. Tuckerman needed some companions who were used to the water and campcraft; he looked as if he might be a Professor and more knowing about history and such things than about how to reef a sail or hook a flounder.

Still grinning at this unusual happening, Tom went into the house, where in the sitting-room his father was reading, his mother sewing, and his sister Milly trimming a new straw hat. “I’m going camping on Cotterell’s Island,” he declared. “It’s a sort of a secret, so you must all promise not to tell.”

Milly looked up quickly. “On Cotterell’s Island? If you step ashore there, somebody’ll pitch you off.”

“Oh no, they won’t. I’m going with the owner.”

Milly wrinkled her nose, as she did when she felt scornful. “I suppose that pleasant old man has sent you an invitation. ‘Dear Mr. Thomas Hallett, I should be so delighted if you’d drop in on me.’” And Milly tilted the straw hat on her hand so as to judge the effect of the ribbon around the brim.

Tom walked across to the fireplace, where he stood with his back to the hearth, as his father often did when he had an announcement to make. “Mr. Christopher Cotterell is dead,” he said. “I received my invitation from his nephew, Mr. John Tuckerman.”

Milly turned around, surprised. “What are you springing on us? Where did you meet this man?”

“Down at the gate to-night,” said Tom calmly. “He wanted a likely young fellow to help him explore the house and the island he’s inherited, and naturally he came to me.”

“Yes, what Tom says is quite true,” declared Mr. Hallett. “Mr. Tuckerman is the new owner. So he asked you to help him, did he?”

“He called himself a landlubber. I’ve an idea too that he doesn’t want to stay on the island alone. I’m to get Ben and David, and we’re to sail his boat for him and fish and cook and keep him company.”

“Humph!” sniffed Milly. “That doesn’t sound very exciting. You’re to do the work while he loafs around.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. He hinted that we might find something very interesting. He called it an adventure. And he let slip something about a mystery.”

Milly put the hat down. She herself was very fond of camping and sailing and swimming, and although she pretended to be quite grown up she still yearned at times for her old tomboy ways. “I suppose he isn’t going to be like Old Crusty—I mean Mr. Christopher Cotterell? He won’t mind people coming out to see that queer old house.”

“That’s just what he does mind,” said Tom. “He wants to keep the whole thing dark, for the present, at least. Why, if he didn’t, all Barmouth would be going out there. Most of them never got nearer the place than to read the signs; and they’d all be crazy to go.”

“Well, it seems to me,” argued Milly, “if he’s going to explore the house he ought to have someone out there who knows something about furnishings. I daresay there’s lots of old silver and curtains and rugs and maybe chests of fine linen. Now of course a woman—well, it’s only natural that a woman—you know what I mean, a woman could help a great deal in sorting such things out.”

“When you say a woman,” inquired Tom, “do you happen to be thinking of Miss Milly Hallett?”

Milly, in spite of her tan, flushed a fiery red. “You know perfectly well, Tom, that you’ve always said I was a great help on a camping party.”

“So you are, Milly,” Tom admitted loyally. “You cook better even than Dave does. But Mr. Tuckerman didn’t say anything about bringing a girl along. I’m afraid he’d think that wouldn’t be business-like.”

“Tom’s right, Milly dear,” said Mrs. Hallett. “This is Mr. Tuckerman’s affair, and it wouldn’t be right to offer him any suggestions. But perhaps, while they’re out on the island, he wouldn’t mind if some day we went over to look at the house. When do you start, Tom?”

“To-morrow at two—that is, if father says it’s all right.”

“Oh, you’re going to ask my consent, are you?” said Mr. Hallett, with a smile. “Well, if Mr. Tuckerman is such a landlubber as he appears to be, I think it’s only right you should give him your help. I don’t see how, with Ben and David and you, he can possibly get into hot water.”

“He can’t,” agreed Milly, picking up the hat again and pretending to shiver. “The water isn’t even warm around the islands in the harbor. However, I don’t suppose this Mr. Tuckerman is apt to care much for swimming.” And as she went on twirling the hat in her hands and puffing out the big blue bow, she hummed a little tune to indicate that she was much more interested in her millinery than in Tom’s prospective adventure.

Tom walked down the street to the small, pitched-roof house—a white house with green shutters and door, and tall pink and red hollyhocks standing up against the sides—where Benjamin Sully lived. As luck would have it, David Norton was sitting with Ben on the doorstep. “Hello!” cried Tom. “I’m looking for a couple of able-bodied seamen.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Ben. “What port are you bound for—the Barbary Coast or Barbadoes or round the Cape of Good Hope?”

Ben was a small, dark boy, agile as a monkey. When he was with David Norton he looked smaller and darker than ever, for David was big of frame and his sandy hair topped a cheerful, freckled face. These two and Tom Hallett were about of an age, and had always shared each other’s secrets.

“Cotterell’s Island, lads. A place where the foot of a white man has never set heel before.” And standing in front of his two friends, Tom related John Tuckerman’s proposal.

When he had finished, Ben nodded. “The plan sounds good to me. I’ve always meant to have a look at that island. As I’ve sized it up, Crusty Christopher wouldn’t have been so concerned to keep people away if he hadn’t had something he wanted to keep secret.”

“I don’t know about that,” said David. “Some people are made that way; they just naturally don’t want other folks around. Maybe the place is just like any other island.”

“Well, I’m going anyhow,” declared Tom. “I guess I can look after Mr. Tuckerman all right by myself. But I didn’t want to seem mean and leave you two out.”

Ben jumped up. “I’m going, all right. I’d hate to think of you and that ignorant fellow out there all by yourselves. Count me in on this, Tom.”

“I guess your friend wouldn’t get much good cooking,” said David, “without me to superintend.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” retorted Tom. “He’s going to take plenty of good stuff.”

“Canned!” snorted David. “I know—hardtack and beans out of a tin. No, siree. You’d be squabbling inside of two days if you didn’t have me and some of my famous flapjacks to keep you pleasant.”

“Nice, modest David,” said Ben, stroking his big friend’s arm. “However, though he doesn’t think very well of himself, I vote that we let him come along. Maybe he’ll be useful.”

“You bet I’ll come,” announced the tow-headed one. “Do you think I’d let you two and a queer man go prowling around a mysterious island without your Uncle David? I’ll be there when the boat sails, with my pet frying-pan!”

II—COTTERELL’S ISLAND

Early the next afternoon the few occupants of Lowe’s Wharf—a couple of men fishing for cunners, a sailor painting the bottom of an upturned dory, two small boys practising tying various kinds of knots with odds and ends of rope—saw three young fellows in dark blue jerseys and khaki coats and trousers and a man rigged out in a homespun Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and greenish-gray golf stockings assemble as if they were about to start on an expedition.

Tom Hallett, slender but wiry, browned by the wind and the sun, dumped his duffle-bag of blankets and extra clothing on the wharf and introduced his companions. “Mr. Tuckerman, this is David Norton, and this is Ben Sully. They’d both like to go along, if you still want three of us.”

John Tuckerman shook hands with each. “I’m proud to have such a fine looking crew,” said he. “Though perhaps I ought to put it the other way about and say three such fine looking captains, I myself being the crew. It doesn’t need more than a glance to tell me that you three know all about the sea and the woods. Great luck, I call it. And if I’m not mistaken there’s our ship, waiting for us Argonauts to go aboard.”

At one side of the wharf, a man was holding the painter of an eighteen-foot sailing dory, already loaded with provisions and John Tuckerman’s bags. The three boys quickly had their own things stowed away. “All right, Mr. Jackson,” said Tuckerman to the man from whom he had rented the boat. “You see I’ve shipped a good crew. You needn’t lie awake nights wondering what’s happened to your Argo.”

The owner grinned. “I know ’em. I’ll trust ’em with the boat. But her name’s the Mary J. Jackson. See, it’s painted there in the bow.”

“So it is. Mary J. Jackson. That’s a very nice name; but somehow it doesn’t seem exactly to suit this business. We’re after the Golden Fleece, like the Argonauts of old; so if you don’t mind I’m going to christen her for this trip the Argo. Just a little fancy of mine.”

“Suit yerself, sir. She’s a good boat, no matter what you call her.”

“Many thanks, Mr. Jackson.” John Tuckerman sat down carefully. “Now, Captain Hallett, give your orders.”

The dory slid away, the experienced hand of Tom in charge of the tiller. Out into the harbor she sped, picking up the breeze as she danced along.

The afternoon sun was pleasantly warm, the water was translucent blue, with here and there wide sweeps of green, on the shore every house and tree stood out in vivid, fresh-tinted color. Tuckerman folded his arms and leaned back in great contentment. “This is something like, my lads!” he exclaimed. “My voyages heretofore have only been made on ocean grayhounds and fat-bodied ferry-boats.”

Ben looked at him pityingly. “It must be pretty hard,” he said, “to live inland, in a big city.”

“Yes, in some ways, though it has its compensations. You see, my ancestors grew restless in New England and moved out across the plains. That is, the Tuckermans did; the Cotterells stayed here. And now there aren’t any Cotterells left. That’s how it came about that I own this island.”

“My father,” spoke up David, “says that the Cotterells were once one of the best known families in Barmouth; but that old Mr. Christopher was as queer as all get out. He knows lots of stories about him. He says that Mr. Christopher lived there with a colored man for his servant, and never saw anybody.”

“Poor old chap!” said Tuckerman. “I can’t help feeling dreadfully sorry for him. Think what a good time he could have had in his big house. Why, in the old days it was one of the show places along the coast and the Cotterells used to have celebrated parties.” Tuckerman gazed out over the water and pulled his chin with his fingers, in a habit he had. “Do you know what I want to do? I want to take that old house and fix it up properly, make it look as it used to, and give it back its good name.” He smiled. “Maybe you’ll think it odd, but I feel as if houses were almost like people. I hate to see either the one or the other go to seed.”

“They are something like people,” Ben agreed. “There’s a church with a steeple in Barmouth that looks just like the pictures of the Pilgrim Fathers with their high-crowned hats. And the windows in front look like eyes, kind of boring eyes that are trying to see right through you.”

“Ben’s always thinking of queer things like that,” David explained, half in apology.

Mr. Tuckerman nodded at the small, dark-browed boy. “I’m glad that Ben came along. I think he’s going to be a great help in fixing up my house.”

In and out between islands, past long jutting ledges, where pine and juniper ran down to the water’s edge, the dory sailed smoothly. Sometimes Tom had to tack; again he ran for a stretch on a course due south. And after about an hour he raised his arm and pointed. “There—on the port bow—there she lies. See that white, sandy beach. That’s Cotterell’s Island.”

Ben and David were familiar with the look of the place of course; they had cruised around it many times, and had always examined it with particular interest because it was a forbidden shore; but now they gazed at it as though it were somehow entirely new, as indeed it was to them, except for the beach and trees.

John Tuckerman nodded. “I’ll take your word for it, Tom. It lies exactly where it should according to the map of the harbor; though I can’t say that it looks very much like the small red dot on the chart Mr. Jackson showed me at his boathouse.”

There was not much to be seen except the whitish-yellow beach, several headlands of purple rock, and thick-growing pines that stood out black-green. There was, however, considerable to be heard as the sailing dory drew near. An immense cawing came from the tree-tops, and finally as the Argo nosed along close to the shore at least a score of crows flapped away from their meeting-place and went winging off to a more secluded grove.

“Uncle Christopher’s neighbors don’t seem to like visitors any better than he did,” observed Tuckerman with twinkling eyes. “Crows do sound dreadfully scolding, don’t they? And I never knew such birds for all wanting to talk at the same time.”

Tom knew where the old pier stood, and brought his boat skilfully up to the landing-stage. The sail was dropped and furled, baggage and stores carried ashore, and the four campers looked about them. From the old and rather decrepit pier a graveled path led up to the front of a wide white house, partially screened by trees.

“Cotterell Hall,” said Tuckerman, gazing at the ancient mansion. “That’s what they used to call it in Revolutionary days. Well, Tom, it’s up to you to tell us what to do. The house won’t run away, and something tells me it won’t be so very long before we’ll be hungry.”

“Suppose we look for our camping ground then,” said Tom, “since it seems to be understood that we’re not going to bunk in the house.”

“That’s the idea,” agreed Tuckerman promptly. “Fond as I am of ancestral halls and that sort of thing, I said to myself when I left the Middle-West for the New England coast: ‘John, you’re to sleep out of doors on a bed of pine boughs, even if the bugs do fall from the trees on your face and the boughs stick you as full of needles as a porcupine. You’re going back to the wild, that’s what you are!’”

His eyes behind his huge tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles looked so intensely serious that the three boys didn’t know whether to laugh or not. For all his dignified appearance he did seem extraordinarily guileless. David, the most outspoken of the three, shook his head solemnly. “This isn’t going to be what you’d call so all-fired wild, you know. If you’re looking for that, you ought to go up in the North Woods.”

Ben came to the rescue. “It’ll do as a starter though, Mr. Tuckerman,” he said encouragingly. “We can’t promise you bears or anything like that, but maybe there’ll be owls and loons and other things that sound sort of strange at night.”

Tuckerman smiled. “Ben, I can see you’re a friendly soul. And you must remember that what may not seem very wild to experienced woodsmen like you three may prove very thrilling to a tenderfoot like me.”

They decided on their camp readily; a smooth stretch of turf in a semi-circle of pines on high ground just above a small sandy beach. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile from the pier and from Cotterell Hall. Pine boughs were cut, trimmed, and spread out for bedding, stores were unpacked, driftwood collected for a fire, and the menu determined on for supper.

Tuckerman looked out at the water, a sheet of soft and beautiful opalescent colors in the setting sun. “Is there any reason why we shouldn’t take a bath?” he inquired. “I feel extremely sticky.”

“No reason whatever,” answered Tom. “The first rule of camp-life is, Obey that impulse. There’s plenty of room in that bathtub, but you won’t find much hot water.”

In five minutes they were all in the ocean, frisky as a school of porpoises, making enough noise to scare any wildfowl away. The boys struck out and swam, trying first one stroke and then another. Tuckerman, however, came lumbering along, jerking his arms and legs like an old and stiff-jointed frog. But he enjoyed himself. He was chuckling and gurgling and slapping his thighs with his hands as they all came out of the water.

“Tom, you must teach me to swim,” he begged. “I can see I’m not in your class now, but give me a week or so——”

“Righto. I bet you’ll learn quick.”

In fifteen minutes they were ready for supper. Fried eggs and bacon, grilled sweet potatoes, coffee, bread and butter, and then flapjacks with jam. “I can see,” said Tuckerman, as he finished his third flapjack, “that David’s reputation as a cook has not been exaggerated. I always wondered what it meant when I read that the gods lived on ambrosia and nectar. Now at last I know.”

“You’ll make his head swell,” cautioned Ben, “and it’s large enough already. We took him to a phrenologist last winter, and the man said he’d never felt such big bumps.”

The dishes were washed. The moon rose. Tuckerman lighted his pipe. “Well,” said Ben, “aren’t we going to have a look at the old house? It seems to me we ought.”

The house, when they approached it a little later in the moonlight—for Ben’s suggestion had met with favor from the others—presented a blank and shuttered white surface, against which the dark outline of the trees around it showed in jagged forms. It had been a fine old dwelling, built in a day when carpenters and joiners took a real love in their work and were as eager to make a graceful, artistic window or doorway as the medieval masons of Europe were to perfect every detail of their great cathedrals.

Broad steps led up to the front door, which was wide and adorned with a big brass knocker and knob. Tuckerman, taking a little electric flashlight from his pocket, aimed it at the moulding above the door. “Aha,” he exclaimed, “there’s the green and gold pineapple in all its glory! They used to put beautifully carved pineapples like that in such places in colonial days; they were the emblems of hospitality. My ancestor Sir Peter seems to have been friendly disposed when he built his dwelling at least.”

“I’ve seen pineapples like that over the doors of some old houses in Barmouth,” said Ben, “but I never thought much about them. That was a pretty nice idea. There’s some style to that front.”

“There was style, real dignified style to the houses of those days,” Tuckerman agreed. “We may think we’re pretty smart nowadays, but let me tell you those ancestors of ours who settled the country could teach us a good deal.” He felt in his pocket for a key. “Well, the pineapple bids us welcome. If there are any ghosts in the house, I think they’ll turn out friendly.”

The lock was rusty, but finally opened to the new owner’s efforts. They stepped into a large hallway, from which a wide stairway ascended at one side. Using his flashlight, Tuckerman discovered a gatelegged table, on which stood a cluster of small candlesticks, all ready for use.

“Now that’s something like—hospitality again!” he declared in a pleased voice. “They used candles in the old days; every guest in the house had one to light him to bed. I suppose these have been waiting for me here ever since Uncle Christopher died.” Lighting the candles with a match, he handed one to each of his companions. “I’m beginning to feel at home already, boys. Welcome to Cotterell Hall.”

Even David, who could see nothing very thrilling in going over an old house, felt something of the excitement that had so obviously taken possession of John Tuckerman. As for Tom and Ben, they peered up the stairway and through the open doors as if they half-expected to see gentlemen in curled wigs, knee-breeches and small swords advancing to meet them.

Tuckerman led the way into the room on the left, a spacious apartment, wainscoted and with a pictured paper, representing scenes in fields and woods, covering the walls to the ceiling. There was a large fireplace, with a carved mantel above it. Fine old pieces of furniture filled the room, and, except for the musty air that is to be found in all houses that have been closed for some time, the place looked precisely as though it were lived in, even to a pile of magazines and books that lay on the centre-table.

“The drawing-room,” said Tuckerman, holding his candle high as he gazed about him. “And there, if I’m not mistaken, is old Sir Peter himself.”

Ben gave a start and looked quickly around. But it was not a ghost to which Tuckerman referred; it was a large painting that hung on the wall across from the fireplace, the portrait of a man in buff-colored coat and breeches, wearing a white tie-wig, and with his right hand resting on the head of a greyhound that rubbed against his knees.

“Fine looking old fellow,” said Tom.

“Yes,” agreed Tuckerman. “Sir Peter was really handsome. I’ve seen pictures of him before. He was a great beau in his time, before the Revolution. What a shame it was that he couldn’t agree with his neighbors about the right of the colonies to be free. That made it mighty hard for his wife and children.”

He went over to look closer at the portrait, and as he held the candle near to the canvas he saw a folded piece of paper stuck into a corner of the heavy frame. “What’s this?” he exclaimed, and drew the paper out. “You don’t suppose the old fellow has left me a message?”

The candle set on the table, Tuckerman opened the sheet. “This is an authentic portrait of Peter Cotterell, painted in 1770,” he read aloud. “He shared with me, his descendant, Christopher Cotterell, a dislike for the society of his kind, though for a different reason. But with me the line of the Cotterells comes to an end, and I care not whether any now learn my ancestor’s secret or not.”

Tuckerman dropped the paper. “So there was a secret, boys! You remember, Tom, what I told you. And Uncle Christopher knew what it was.”

“Hello!” exclaimed Ben. “My candle’s blown out!” He turned. “Why, that window’s open a little at the bottom. See how the curtains blow.”

“Spooks,” scoffed David. “It looks to me as if Crusty Christopher were playing a joke on us.”

III—BEN AND DAVID MAKE A DISCOVERY

Although David Norton could get around the bases on the Barmouth High School baseball diamond as fast as anyone else, when there was need of it, and could keep on doing a clog-dance in a Minstrel Show until the audience rose up and begged him to quit, he could also at times be as lazy as a jelly-fish stranded on the beach, which as everyone knows is just about the laziest creature in nature. At the present moment he lay extended on the stern seat of the sailing dory, while little Ben Sully, as patient and expert a fisherman as was to be found in Barmouth Harbor, was watching his line for any indication of a flounder nibble.

“Funny old bird,” said David. “Reminds me of someone out of a story book.”

“Old bird?” queried Ben. “Do you refer to Sir Peter Cotterell or to Crusty Christopher?”

“To neither of them, Benjie. Our friend Professor Tuckerman is the particular feathered creature to whom I was alluding. I opened one eye last night; and what do you think I saw? Professor Tuckerman was sitting up, in his suit of flannel pajamas, staring out at the water as if he saw something.”

“Perhaps he did. Or maybe he was only thinking. Some people do think sometimes, you know, Dave. I did some thinking myself last night.”

“About old Christopher’s secret?”

At the moment Ben was too busy to reply. With practised care he drew up his line and threw a fine, flapping flounder on the bottom of the boat.

“Yes, about the secret,” Ben said, as he rebaited his hook. “I believe there is one. And I think that Christopher Cotterell rather hoped his nephew John Tuckerman would find out what it was.”

“Why didn’t he tell him then, instead of leaving that crazy note?”

Ben shook his head. “Christopher wasn’t like most people. But it seems to me he was rather proud of that secret,—it had been in the family so long,—and he didn’t want it to be entirely forgotten. So he meant to let it be known there was a secret, even if nobody ever found out what it was. A person might do that, you know.”

“It would take a mighty queer sort of person,” sniffed David.

Ben resumed his fishing, watching his line as a cat watches a mouse-hole.

But David, in spite of posing as an unbeliever of all things he couldn’t see for himself, had a well-developed bump of curiosity. When he saw that Ben didn’t mean to continue the subject he raised himself on one arm and demanded, “Do you take any stock in there being a mystery on the island that goes back to the Revolution?”

“Sure,” was the prompt answer. “The house goes back that far, and some of the furniture in it, I suppose. Why not a mystery?”

“Well, it might, perhaps. But see here, Benjie——”

“Sh-sh-ish, you’ll frighten the fish.” Ben brought up another flounder and unhooked it.

As he dropped in the line again he continued, “Mr. Tuckerman told me a few things this morning. You see, this Sir Peter was a man of means. He had a lot of valuable things in this house, silver and such things he’d had brought over from England. When the people of Barmouth were trying to do all they could to help George Washington and his army they thought their rich neighbor out here ought to do his share. But he was a Tory and wanted King George to win, and so he wouldn’t do anything when they asked him. The colonists came to his house, but they found very little; his famous silver plate was gone; they took some things, but they always thought he had tricked them. And after that they wouldn’t have anything to do with Sir Peter.”

“Served him right, the old scamp.”

“Now Mr. Tuckerman thinks the secret may have something to do with the things the neighbors couldn’t find. At least that’s a possibility.”

“Huh,” chuckled David, “the Revolution was more than a hundred years ago. If that was the secret, some of the Cotterells since then would have found out about it. And when they did, there’s an end to the secret.”

Again Ben was busy. A third flounder appeared and was carefully landed. “You’re right, my boy,” said Ben, “if they did find out what became of Sir Peter’s valuables. But suppose they didn’t? Suppose Crusty Christopher and his father, and his father before that, knew the old story, but never could find the things? How about that, my lad?”

“Well, in that case,” answered David slowly, “I should say the betting was a thousand to one the secret would stay a secret.”

“Mr. Tuckerman calls it a sporting chance,” said Ben. “I said to him just about what you’ve said to me now; but he grinned and told me he never gave up conundrums.”

David dropped back into his former comfortable position, his hands clasped under his head and his cap pulled down over his nose, so as to shield that sensitive feature from burning a more fiery red than it was already. “So Tom and the Professor are prowling around the old house this morning?” he said reflectively. “Well, they’re not apt to run into any ghosts at this time of day.”

Ben, absorbed in his fishing, continued his careful handling of his line until half-a-dozen flounders were deposited in the boat. Then he stowed away his tackle, stretched his arms, and looked around. “Now, Dave, you old duffer, I’m going to take a cruise about our island home. There’s nothing like knowing all the ins and outs of the place where you’re living. Do you think you’re strong enough to handle the tiller, or would you rather dangle your feet over the bow?”

David sat up with a grunt. “Don’t you get sarcastic, young feller. I can sail this dory with one hand behind my back.” And shortly he had the Argo headed up into the wind, keeping well out from shore so as to avoid the occasional spits of rock that ornamented the coast.

They started to make the circuit. Cotterell’s Island, so far as they could judge from the water, was very much like all the other islands that lay out from Barmouth, thickly wooded for the most part, with alternating beaches and headlands, and here and there a cliff, with little rock-bound basins at the foot. On the eastward side, however, there was an opening, where the tide ran inland for some distance, a fair sort of harbor except when the wind should blow from that quarter. “There,” said Ben, “there’s a snug landlocked channel. If I’d been one of the Cotterells and wanted to keep a boat hidden that’s the place I’d have picked out.”

“You’re making the Professor’s ancestors sound like pirates or smugglers,” objected David. “What do you think they did that they wanted to keep so dark?”

“That little inlet can’t be so far from the back of the house either,” Ben went on, paying no attention to his companion’s question. “Yes, that would be the place to steal away when the neighbors came to call.”

“I’ll take a look up there,” declared David, who was beginning to feel that Ben was giving himself airs. “I guess I can find my way up that inlet as well as any of your blessed Cotterells could.” And suiting the act to the word, he brought the Argo about and kept her bow a little to the north of west until she had cleared a seaweed-covered reef that was high up out of the water at ebb-tide.

Ben said not a word, but picked up a boathook, in case it should be necessary to fend off the dory at some turn of the shore. But David knew his business. Up the winding channel he made his way until the Argo’s bottom gently ran on to gravel at the head of the stream.

“Yes, I was right,” said Ben. “There’s the roof of the house on the other side of those trees.” A leap, and he landed on shore, the dory careening on one side from the force of his jump.

“Hi there, young feller, what are you trying to do?” cried David. “I didn’t tell you you could go ashore.”

Again Ben paid no attention to the other’s words. He was looking about him as if he was very much interested in the place where he had landed.

David, making sure the Argo was safely aground, clambered over the side. “Was it your intention, Mr. Sully, to scuttle our good ship here?” he inquired with mock politeness.

“Look,” said Ben, in a deep and earnest tone.

David looked. In the marshy ground a little in front of them were two distinct footprints, uncommonly large footprints, with very wide toes and very deep heels.

“My word!” whistled David. “Benjie, we’ve come to the lair of the mastodon!”

“Footprints!” murmured Ben, regarding the marks with the same awed surprise with which Robinson Crusoe first gazed at the prints in the sand of his island.

Distinct Footprints

“A giant’s footprints,” said David.

“They’re never Mr. Tuckerman’s or Tom’s,” said Ben.

“The Professor has rather small feet,” stated David, “and I happen to remember that Tom wore sneakers this morning.”

“They can’t have been there very long,—not for more than a few days at the most.”

“I should say not. Benjamin, somebody has been trespassing on our island.”

“I wonder if there are any more.” Ben began to search.

There were no more footprints, however. The stretch of soggy ground was very limited, almost immediately the soil grew stony. So, after a brief hunt, the two came back to the shore. “Now I wonder,” mused Ben, “what that very large-footed person was doing here.”

“Do you think,” asked David, “he can have been looking for the Cotterell treasure?”

“It’s much more likely,” said Ben, “he was looking for something easier to find. However—suppose—there’s an off chance——” And Ben went on mumbling to himself, while he jingled a bunch of keys in his pocket, as was his custom when he was lost in thought.

“What in the world are you doing?” demanded the exasperated David.

“Putting two and two together—or at least trying to.”

“Well, they make four. There are times, Benjie,” David continued, imitating the manner of a teacher at the school they both attended, “when I find myself almost on the point of losing patience with you. The crew will now return aboard the Argo, leaving the mystery of the mastodon’s footprints unsolved.”

When they returned to the beach in front of their camp they found Mr. Tuckerman and Tom already getting dinner. That is to say, Tom was actually getting it, while John Tuckerman was carrying out his orders. At the moment the latter was peeling potatoes. His flannel shirt open at his throat, his golf-stockings stuck full of little burrs and his face and arms already showing blisters of sunburn, he looked decidedly different from the very dignified person who had come upon Tom Hallett in the lane.

“Flounders,” announced Ben, laying his string of fish on a board that served as a table. “The very best eating, in my humble opinion.”

“Put them in the refrigerator for supper,” said Tom. “You two were gone so long I decided to knock up an omelette for our midday meal.”

“‘Knock up’ is good,” agreed David. “I suppose, Mr. Tuckerman, Tom cracked the shells with a baseball bat.”

“I don’t know how he did it,” Tuckerman said; “it seemed like a miracle to me. But there’s the result; and if anybody ever saw anything more truly beautiful—anything so calculated to make the mouth water in anticipation—well, I don’t believe anybody ever did.” He pointed his paring knife at a golden-brown, crisp object that lay, garnished with watercress, on a big tin plate.

“And speaking of water,” said Tom, “we found the well back of Cotterell Hall. Fresh water, guaranteed sweet and pure. There’s a bucket of it.”

They sat down to dinner, and between mouthfuls they talked.

“Wonderful old house,” said Tom. “We explored it from cellar to attic. Four post bedsteads——”

“With wonderful canopy tops!” added Tuckerman, his spectacled eyes gleaming.

“And enormous chests of drawers,” continued Tom.

“Full of all kinds of clothes,” Tuckerman added. “Ladies’ laces and muslins, shawls, mantillas, gentlemen’s pantaloons, neckerchiefs, and what waistcoats!”

“Funny old kitchen,” said Tom. “With a fireplace as big as a cabin.”

“And a crane and a hob and a whole fleet of earthenware crocks,” Tuckerman supplemented.

“I say, Mr. Tuckerman,” cried David, “why don’t you turn the place into a museum? All the people who tour through Barmouth in the summer would jump out of their skins to see such a place as that.”

“What I want to know,” said Ben, “is whether you got any clue to the Cotterell treasure.”

Tuckerman shook his head. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, Benjamin; and a treasure that’s been hidden for over a century doesn’t come to light in twenty-four hours.”

“Ah, just you wait till our Benjie gets busy,” said David, waving his finger wisely. “There’s the bright lad for you. While you two pottered about those gigantic bedsteads and chests of drawers and fireplaces, what did our Benjie discover?” He paused to heighten his announcement. “Benjamin Sully discovered a pair of gigantic footprints!”

It took a moment for this to sink in.

“Footprints?” said Tuckerman, puzzled.

“Someone has landed at the little creek near the back of the house,” explained Ben, “and since the last rain, too.”

“Someone with enormous feet,” added David. “Now what do you suppose such a person as that could be doing here?”

Tuckerman put his hand into his coat pocket and drew out a very small and crumpled handkerchief. “We found this on a table in the kitchen. My Uncle Christopher only had a negro man-servant. And yet this belonged to a lady,—a very particular lady, I should say, a dainty lady.” He spread the handkerchief out. “With beautifully embroidered initials—A. S. L.” He lifted it to his nose. “And it smells of lavender—and quite fresh, too.”

Solemnly the tiny handkerchief was handed around. Each smelled it and nodded his head.

“Someone’s been in the house,” said Tuckerman, “although all the doors were locked.”

“A lady with enormous feet,” declared David. “My eye, how the plot thickens!”

IV—VISITORS

Two days later the campers were as much at sea as ever regarding the secret to which Crusty Christopher had referred in the note left in the picture frame. They had explored the island and they had explored the house, and neither outdoors nor indoors had provided them with a clue.

John Tuckerman—although David persisted in calling him Professor—was the most exuberant and lively of the four. He delighted in everything,—in the early swim before breakfast, in the cooking and eating, especially in the eating, in sleeping out of doors, and even, it seemed, in washing the dishes. He would sing as he washed, wild, rollicking songs, the words of which he made up as he went along, all about pirates and sailors and sea-serpents, with a great many “Yo-heave-hos” and “Blow the man down, my lads,” by way of chorus; all which he accompanied with a pretended hitching up of his trousers as sailors were supposed to do to cheer them at their work.

“There are times when he almost looks like a pirate,” David whispered to Tom, as they watched Tuckerman sharpening a knife on the sole of his shoe preparatory to sticking it into a cover of a can of baked beans. “Like a pirate, that is, with one exception,—those horn-rimmed spectacles.”

It was true; Tuckerman couldn’t look like a daredevil with those enormous glasses. But to offset the studious look they gave him his face was now a beautiful lobster-like red and beginning to peel.

Any one could see, moreover, that Cotterell Hall was the apple of his eye. It amused Tom and David to see the affection and pride with which he regarded every stick and stone of the old house. Ben was more sympathetic, for Ben was by nature interested in old things, and had in turn collected everything from abandoned bird’s nests to rusty jackknives.

It was Ben who, searching through a cupboard at one side of the fireplace in the front room at the Hall, pulled out a package of old letters and gave a shout of joy. “Hi there, see what I’ve found!” he cried as he untied the bundle and threw the envelopes loosely on the table.

“What is it? Old letters,” said Tom, glancing at the yellowing paper.

“Postage stamps!” triumphed Ben. “Some of the earliest issues! I’ll bet you never saw that St. Louis stamp with the two bears on it before.”

“Humph,” said David. “Postage stamps! No one collects them now.”

But John Tuckerman looked over Ben’s shoulder, and then snatched up one of the letters. “You’re right, Benjamin. These are rare ones. I shouldn’t wonder if they were worth a great deal of money.”

It was not, however, the money value of the things in the house that interested Tuckerman. It was partly his love of old things, especially of things that were beautifully made, and partly his feeling that they had belonged to the Cotterells for so long, the Cotterells being his own people. “Uncle Christopher owned all these things,” he said. “Poor Uncle Christopher. He was stiff-necked, no doubt; but he had to suffer for it. I’ve found a book he wrote in, and I can see that he was too proud to sell his heirlooms, and that he had very little money, and didn’t want anyone to know how hard up he was. So he turned hermit. He didn’t really hate other people; he was simply so made up that he couldn’t mix with them on an equal footing.”

David pretended to regard the Cotterell family secret as a great joke, although he admitted that he was very much puzzled over what he called “the mystery of the lady with enormous feet.” On the same afternoon when Ben found the rare postage stamps, David, being alone with Tom in the front room, cocked an eye at the painted gentleman on the wall, and thus addressed him:

“Sir Peter, I don’t want to be disrespectful; but it does seem to me you were mighty tight with your silver when your good neighbors were doing their best to get the thirteen United States started. Or didn’t you really have the things they suspected you of having? You’ve got a long nose and a twinkle in your eye, and I’d say it mightn’t be beyond you to have your little game at the expense of Barmouth.”

Tom laughed. “You can’t judge Sir Peter by yourself, Dave.”

“Certainly not,” was the instant reply. “I’ll admit we are very different. Nothing could induce me to have my picture taken with a dog like that greyhound cuddling up against my shins. The good people of Barmouth didn’t have any greyhounds or any pie crust tables or gate-legged tables, or whatever kind of tables it is that the Professor finds so delightful, and they were envious, and rowed their boats out here, and tramped up to the door, probably looking for all the world like a gang of hayseeds.”

“Remember, Dave, your ancestors and mine were probably among them.”

“I’ll admit that also,” said David, “and for the sake of your feelings, Tom, I’ll take back that about their looking like hayseeds. Let me put it this way. A crowd of very nice looking, but temporarily cross and angry people—men and women, and possibly a few dogs—come up to the house here and demand to see the elegant Sir Peter. Sir Peter doesn’t want to see them; he doesn’t approve of them; he thinks that good old King George is just about the proper cheese to rule over him and his. But Sir Peter’s a gentleman—you can see that from his portrait—and he doesn’t want to disappoint the neighbors, who’ve come all the way out here in boats. So he takes a pinch of snuff and he whistles to his greyhound and he goes out on the front steps. He looks down along his nose at the people of Barmouth and his right eye twinkles—you notice, Tom, that it’s his right eye that’s the humorous one—and he says: ‘Friends and fellow citizens, come in and enjoy yourselves. The green and gold pineapple is over the door and Cotterell Hall is yours for the afternoon. But the silver plate you’re so anxious to lay your hands on isn’t here any more. It’s vanished, vamoosed, flown away; and the family are using the plain blue and white china kitchen set.’ Did they believe him?”

“No,” sang out Tom.

“Exactly,” agreed David, with a bow. “They rushed past him into the house, and they threw things about, and they buzzed around like a nest of hornets you happen to hit with a stick. But they didn’t find anything after all; and the reason is simple—there wasn’t anything of the sort they had in mind to find. It was just Sir Peter’s little joke. And it worked to perfection. Ever since people have been wondering what he did with the silverware he mentioned that day. Sir Peter, my opinion of you is that you were a first-class joker.”

“You may be right,” Tom assented, “but for goodness’ sake don’t rub that idea in on Mr. Tuckerman and Ben. They’re thrilled to the fingertips about there being a treasure hidden away somewhere.”

“Babes in the wood!” sniffed David. “I believe you could put almost anything over on the Professor if you dressed it up in old clothes.”

To the skeptical David and the inclined-to-be-skeptical Tom the other two now appeared. They had been in the apartment on the second floor that had been Christopher Cotterell’s bedroom and had been rummaging through a little secretary that stood between the windows. Tuckerman had a notebook in his hand. “These are jottings my uncle made from time to time,” he declared. “Here’s one. ‘As regards the saying that the hiding-place is just beyond the three pines that stand between two rocks where the sun goes down, I have scoured and scoured the island, and come to the opinion that the extreme southwestern point must be the place intended, although to-day there are only two pines there. I have dug at this place, but found only sand.’”

“Maybe we can find another place that answers that description,” said Ben hopefully. “And it stands to reason that the four of us can dig better than your Uncle Christopher, even if he had his servant to help him.”

David, under cover of his hand, winked at Tom, who pretended not to see him.

“Here’s another note,” Tuckerman continued. “‘Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket.’ That’s a saying my father handed down. What can it mean?”

“Mahogany-hued man with long, skinny legs,” echoed Ben.

“And a hooked nose and a scar across the left cheek,” chortled David. “Pirate stuff, of course. There’s always someone like that. I suppose he’s the fellow who hid the treasure on a dark, stormy night.”

Tuckerman gazed at the speaker with his big, owl-like eyes. “You may be right, although I rather thought of him as a faithful, old-fashioned serving-man, from whom Sir Peter had no secrets.”

David grinned; but how could anyone joke on a matter that Tuckerman took so seriously? “Have it your own way,” he said. “Probably you’re right. But hooked-nose pirate or faithful servant I don’t see how the mahogany one can be of much help to us here to-day.”

Tuckerman closed the notebook. “Suppose we go down to the southwestern point. At least we’ll get a good view of the sunset and freshen up for supper.”

When they came to that end of the island they found the ledges and neighboring sand covered with a vast array of sandpipers, all with their heads turned in the same direction, watching, as it were, a score or so of leaders, who stood out in front, closest to the water. Quietly though the four crept up, they were still a couple of dozen yards from the rear ranks when, with one accord and with as smooth a motion as though a sail were being drawn across the beach, the hundreds of little winged bodies rose in air and flew out across the waves.

“By Jove, that’s pretty!” said Tom. “They’re like ever so many bits of silver paper blowing about in the wind.”

So they were. Fascinated, the four watched the sandpipers. When the birds were tilted one way, on one tack, they could hardly be seen against the light, they actually disappeared. Then a tiny deflection, a dip and twist of the wings, and they were a network of silver, drawn this way, then that. They wheeled, they rose, they dropped; no human beings ever moved in such perfect precision; it was not as if they followed a leader, it was as if every single sandpiper of the hundreds knew instinctively what the bird just ahead of him would do. And at last they descended, like falling leaves, on a flat rock out in the water.

“I don’t see how they can do it,” sighed Ben. “We could drill and drill forever, and never get anything like that. Don’t tell me that sandpipers haven’t brains.”

“You bet your boots they have,” said David. “Fine little fellows! I don’t see how anybody can possibly want to shoot them.”

The little fellows rose again and went soaring off against the sunset sky.

Tuckerman drew a long breath. “You boys who live by the seashore have much to be thankful for. The pioneers who pushed inland must have been awfully homesick for just such sights as that. Gee whillikins! What a gorgeous sky! I could look at it for hours.”

His companions, however, had other things to do. They wanted to locate the two pines that stood between the two rocks. A short search discovered them. The trees, old and gnarled, twisted of branches on the eastern side, where the winter winds had lashed them, still stood like sentinels between the lichen-covered boulders, where Christopher Cotterell and doubtless others before him back to the days of Peter had surveyed them.

“They’re here all right,” said Ben. “What was it the notebook said? ‘I have dug at this place, but found only sand.’ Well, there’s plenty of sand—oodles of it. But if you ask my opinion, this isn’t the place to dig.”

“You’re lazy,” scoffed David. “Tell me, Mr. Man, why in your learned opinion isn’t this the right place to dig?”

“I’ve a hunch it isn’t,” answered Ben.

Tuckerman looked at the serious-faced small fellow, and suddenly gave a laugh. “I’ve got the same sort of a hunch myself. My uncle Christopher dug here and didn’t find anything. I don’t want to do his work all over again.”

They let it go at that, and slowly, with an eye to the sunset, which every moment grew more like a vast palette on which many colors were mixed, went back by the path through the woods that skirted the western shore. They reached the old house, and were passing it on their way to the camp when Tom abruptly halted. “I say, I saw something moving at that corner window on the second floor! Something white—yes, sir, it moved. I’ll take my word to that!”

All stopped and gazed at the house. The windows were closed, no curtain could have been blowing.

“Nonsense,” said David. “What you saw was the sunset reflected on the glass.”

“I’ll bet it wasn’t,” Tom retorted. And straightway he went up the graveled walk that led to the front door.

Now usually John Tuckerman had been careful to lock the door when he left the house, but this time he had forgotten. Tom turned the knob and pushed the door open.

They all went into the hall and stood there listening. Undoubtedly there was the sound of footsteps on the floor above.

“That sounds to me like a giggle,” whispered Ben.

“Sh-ssh,” warned David.

Footsteps tapped on the floor, were coming apparently toward the head of the staircase.

Then unmistakably there was a laugh, a light and merry laugh, in a feminine key.

In the silence that followed David’s voice rose. “The lady with the enormous feet!” he muttered.

A patter of feet and there came into view two ladies, two ladies in hoopskirts, with white stockings and little black slippers laced with black ribbons, and flowered silk waists and flat, mushroom-shaped hats with streamers falling behind. They stood at the head of the staircase and stared down at the four below.

“It’s Milly and Sally Hooper!” exclaimed Tom.

“Did I hear someone whisper ‘The lady with the enormous feet?’” Milly Hallett wrinkled her nose and stuck out the tip of her tongue. “Sarah, my dear, the gentlemen aren’t so gallant as they used to be. Whoever saw neater, sweeter slippers than these we have on!”

Slowly, with a hand to each side of their skirts, which swayed like great balloons, the two girls came down the stairs.

At the foot John Tuckerman stood, bowing. “Ladies, you greatly honor my poor house,” he declared.

“Who is the gentleman, Milly?” asked Sarah Hooper, a black-haired, black-eyed girl with scarlet ribbons to her hat.

“Faith, I think it must be one of the comely Cotterells,” said Milly. “What a fine sunburn he has!”

“John Tuckerman, at your service,” said that gentleman. “Nephew of Mr. Christopher.”

Milly Hallett’s blue eyes danced with delightful mischief. “And Mr. Tuckerman, who are the three extraordinary young persons standing in a row behind you? They do look so funny! Such remarkable clothes.”

David looked at Ben, and Ben looked at Tom, and Tom looked down at his khaki trousers, which still bore patches of white and green paint acquired a month ago when he was freshening up his canoe.

“Ladies, these are three experts,” Tuckerman explained. “The gentleman with the yellow hair and the zebra stripes on his trousers is an expert skipper, the one with the midnight hair and the rich mahogany skin is an expert fisherman, and the third—with the splendid red complexion and the curling locks—can cook a meal that will make you forget every other breakfast or dinner or supper you ever sat down to.”

“Really!” exclaimed Sarah. “Milly dear, something reminds me that it’s a long time since we tasted food.”

“I was just about to touch on that point,” said Tuckerman. “Will you do us the honor of breaking bread with us? That is, if you won’t injure your exquisite gowns by eating out of doors.”

“They can’t sit on the grass in those things,” Tom declared. “They’d ruin them for fair.”

“Oh, can’t we!” cried Milly and Sarah in chorus. “Just you watch us do it!”

And in spite of hoopskirts and tiny slippers and gingerly-perched hats the two girls ran to the front door and down the steps to the path. The other four, catching up with them, piloted them to camp.

On the way Milly explained. She had felt that she just had to find out what was going on at Cotterell’s Island—she had feared that bears or ghosts, mosquitoes or robbers might have made an end of her brother and his friends; so she had gotten Sally Hooper, and they had taken Sally’s father’s sailboat and sailed out to the island. They hadn’t seen the boys; but when they went up to the white house they found the front door unlocked. They went in and looked the place all over. In a room on the second floor they found oceans of clothes in chests and closets, and they simply had to try some of them on. Then they thought they’d surprise the campers. And they certainly had done that, she concluded, because she had never seen four people look so astonished as those four had when they saw Sally and her come to the top of the stairs.

In fifteen minutes supper was under way, a truly marvellous supper, for David was determined to show these skeptical girls what a howling cook he was. The guests were not allowed to soil their fingers; as a matter of fact they found they had their hands full with trying to manage their ridiculous hoopskirts and sit down in them without smashing the hoops. But they did contrive to seat themselves on a grassy bank, and Milly took off her slippers—which were horribly tight—and the two watched their four serving-men get supper, and occasionally put in a word or so of advice.

When each of the six had declared that they could not possibly eat a single additional pancake—no matter how much golden syrup was offered as an extra inducement—supper came to a conclusion, and Milly cast a reflective eye out on the water.

“Sally and I must be starting back,” she said with a sigh; “and I don’t suppose they’d let us land in Barmouth, dressed in these funny old clothes.”

Sarah Hooper looked at David, who sat cross-legged on the ground, resting after his labors. “You’re a very superior chef,” she admitted; “but I want to know what you meant when you heard us upstairs and murmured, ‘The lady with the enormous feet.’ Oh yes, I heard you; and those were the very words you used.”

David laughed. “I plead guilty. But I didn’t refer to either you or Milly. I was thinking of a little detective work we have on hand.”

Then he had to explain about the discovery of the very large footprints on the bank of the creek and the finding of a lady’s lavender-scented handkerchief, with the initials A. S. L., in the kitchen.

“Oh, I love mysteries!” said Sarah. “I’m always reading detective stories and working them out before the author tells you exactly what did happen.”

“There’s the man for you then,” said David, pointing at Ben. “Eats ’em alive, he does.”

“Huge footprints and a lady’s handkerchief,” murmured Milly. “That is a funny combination. But we really must go, or Sally’s mother and father will be sending out searching parties.”

They all walked back to the house, and the two girls went upstairs to change into their own clothes. When they came down again, much more comfortably dressed, they found the others in the big front room, where Tuckerman had lighted the candles.

“How lovely!” exclaimed the romantic Sarah. “I adore old furniture. What a duck of a divan! And that beautiful secretary.” She looked at a desk that stood in a corner, at the other end from the fireplace. “It’s mahogany, of course—and what perfect, long, fluted, shiny legs it has!”

“What’s that?” said Ben. “Say it again, and slower.”

“I tell you we must be going back,” declared Milly positively. “Never mind these ducky old things, Sally. Think of your waiting parents.”

So Sally had to go, and they all trooped down to the pier, where Mr. Hooper’s sailboat was bobbing about on the tide.

Tom insisted that he would take the Argo, to convoy the girls home; but Milly also insisted that he should do nothing of the kind; she knew how to handle a boat quite as well as her brother, the wind was right, the water smooth, and she had often sailed later in the evening than that. Nevertheless when Milly’s boat was out from the island, the campers embarked in the Argo and sailed along after them, until the lights of Barmouth were visible right ahead. Then, with a good-night shout, the crew of the Argo brought their craft about and headed back for the pier.

They walked through the moonlit woods to their camp, cleaned the dishes, and made things snug for the night. As Ben, seated on a log, pulled off his shoes, he said to Tom, who sat near him: “Did you hear what Sally said about that desk in the corner?”

“Duck of a thing—some such nonsense.”

“No. She said, ‘Mahogany, of course. And what long, fluted, shiny legs.’”

“Perhaps she did. I don’t remember.”

“Doesn’t that convey anything to your mind, Tom?”

“Can’t say it does. Mahogany—legs. Oh, I’m too sleepy to think of anything.”

“Well, it conveys something to me,” said Ben. “I think maybe I’ve got a clue, thanks to innocent Sally. I suppose it’s too late to go back to the house to-night?”

“It’s too late to go anywhere except to sleep,” answered Tom shortly. “I guess your clue will keep. If it’s got anything to do with Sir Peter’s treasure, it’s kept for a hundred years.”

Tom gave a gigantic yawn, and rolled over on to his bed.

But Ben lay awake for some time, until he got the sound of the lapping of waves on the beach mixed with John Tuckerman’s voice singing “Yo—heave—ho, my lads,” and then he fell asleep.

V—THE MAHOGANY MAN

Mr. Tuckerman was doing the crawl-stroke—slowly and laboriously, with almost as much splashing as a small paddle-wheel steamboat makes—but still very much better than he had been able to do it two days before. He was heading toward a rock, on which Tom, straight as an arrow and almost as brown as a chocolate drop, stood with his arms pointed outward, ready to dive.

Ben stood back of Tom, slapping his dripping thighs and hopping about on his toes. In the water David was floating, as comfortable and serene as a harbor seal taking an afternoon nap. “Look out, Professor,” he cautioned; “Tom might land on your head. He’s a terrible practical joker. Don’t you let him use you as a cushion.”

Tuckerman plowed along, gasping a little, his eyes fixed on the rock.

Tom dove, and came up alongside David. “If I was picking out a cushion, I’d take you. You’d make a bully springboard. Push right along, Mr. Tuckerman. You’re doing nobly.”

Ben gave a whoop. “Look out there!” Lithe as an eel, and seemingly made of rubber, he sprang from the rock, turned a somersault, and shot smoothly into the water. He reappeared, looking like a porpoise, his black hair all shiny, and with a few lusty flaps reached the rock again just as Tuckerman, breathless, put out his hands to clutch at the slippery side.

“You’re a regular flying-fish,” Ben complimented Tuckerman, as the latter, careful not to scrape too close against the rough edge of rock, drew himself slowly up to the level top. “I don’t believe any of your friends out in the plain country of Illinois would know you if they happened to see you now.”

“I don’t believe they would,” agreed Tuckerman, sitting down gingerly and embracing his knees with his hands. “I know I look like a red Indian, and I feel as if I’d got a thousand more muscles than I ever had before.”

“If you don’t mind——” said Ben; and putting his hands on Tuckerman’s shoulders he made a leap-frog jump over the latter’s head and splashed loudly into the water.

“Well,” said David, changing his position from floating to treading water, “I think the coffee must be boiling now. It’s time I dropped those eggs.” And with leisurely strokes he made for the beach, where he had thoughtfully left a Turkish towel beside his pile of clothes.

The others followed suit, and had soon arrayed themselves in the few garments they thought needful to wear in their island home. David poured the coffee and attended to the toast and eggs, which had been procured the day before from a farmer on the mainland. And as they ate, Ben propounded the question:

“Fellows, what was it Christopher Cotterell said about a mahogany man?”

“He said,” Tuckerman answered, “‘Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket.’”

“Exactly,” said Ben slowly. “Well, I’ve got an idea I know where to find that man.”

The other three looked at him in utter amazement. “The dickens you have, Benjie!” retorted Tom. “Why, he couldn’t be alive now.”

“Perhaps Ben thinks he’s a mummy,” suggested David, “or a piece of wood that’s turned to stone.”

“Maybe I do,” Ben chuckled. “You’re getting warm, old horse. Long, skinny legs—doesn’t that remind you of something? Haven’t you seen any that answer that description in this neighborhood?”

“You’re not referring to mine?” asked Tuckerman.

The breakfast-party laughed, the Professor wore such a look of injured dignity.

“No, sir, not to yours,” Ben said. “Yours are fat as a drum compared to those I have in mind.”

“I remember Ben mumbled something about this last night,” mused Tom. “But I was too sleepy to listen. He said something about Sally Hooper, too; something about her giving him an idea.”

Ben nodded. “So she did.”

“Didn’t I always claim that our Benjie was a real detective?” said David. “Clean up first; and then for the yarn.”

Breakfast things were put away in their box, and then the three turned to Ben. “Where’s your mahogany man?” they demanded in one voice.

“There’s no hurry,” was the tantalizing answer. “Perhaps I’d better go fishing first.”

Tom laid his hand on the other boy’s shoulder and twisted him around. “Lead us to him,” he commanded.

Ben shrugged. “Oh, very well. You’re more interested than you were last night. Come along, but don’t make any noise.”

He led them to Cotterell Hall. Tuckerman had locked the front door after the girls had left on the night before, and now he opened it with the key he kept in his trouser pocket.

Ben led them into the hall, and then into the big front room, which was now flooded with sunlight.

“Look around,” he announced; “and tell me what you see.”

They looked about the room with puzzled faces. “Rats!” exclaimed David. “I don’t see any man here.”

Ben glanced at Tuckerman. “Long, skinny, mahogany-colored legs,” he murmured.

“Not Sir Peter’s portrait?” said Tuckerman.

Ben walked across the room in the direction of the secretary. “When Sally came in here last night,” he explained, “she said something about this desk. ‘Mahogany, I suppose—and what long, fluted, shiny legs.’ Well, it has, hasn’t it?” He laid his hand on the secretary. “Mightn’t this be the man?”

“You’re joking,” Tom protested; while David looked from the desk to his friend’s serious face as if he thought Ben must be plain crazy.

Tuckerman, however, laid his hand also on the piece of furniture. “They liked their little joke in the old days,” he observed. “It might be, Ben. If that’s so——” He turned the small brass key in the lock of the lid, and pulling out the two supports on either side of the lower drawers let the lid down on them. “If that’s so; and this is the mahogany man—where’s his breast pocket?”

There were small drawers inside, and a row of pigeonholes to either side of a central compartment that was also locked by a key.

“Somewhere up in his chest,” said Ben.

Tuckerman pulled out the drawers and emptied their contents, small objects, keys, pencils, bits of sealing-wax, a few sheets of blank paper. He put his hand in the pigeonholes and drew out several bundles of letters. “I’ve been through all these things before,” he said with a shake of his head.

“That place in the middle,” Tom suggested.

“Only an ink-stand,” said Tuckerman; and unlocking the little door he drew forth a big glass inkstand with a brass top. That was all there was in the little cupboard; all the contents of the upper part of the secretary were arrayed on the lid.

“No go,” said David. “The man hasn’t anything in his pocket to give us any clue.”

“I must say,” said Tom, “it does seem ridiculous to me that anyone could have meant that desk——”

“I’ve heard,” mumbled Ben, who was paying no attention to what the others were saying, “that old desks have secret compartments. My grandfather has an old one that looks something like this. Let me see——” He slipped his hand into the pigeonhole on the right of the little door Tuckerman had unlocked, and began to feel around. “I say! Here’s something. It feels like a wooden spring.”

Tuckerman put his hand into the central compartment. “Push on the spring,” he directed.

Ben pushed and Tuckerman at the same moment pulled out the cupboard that had harbored the inkstand. It was a box that fitted snugly into the centre of the secretary.

“Well, that’s a great stunt,” said Tom. “It comes to pieces like a nest of drawers.”

The four, their heads close together, looked into the space from which the cupboard had come.

All they saw was an unvarnished piece of pine board, apparently the back of the desk.

“Looks like my grandfather’s,” said Ben. “Yes, there’s a couple of holes.” And putting his forefinger and thumb into two indentations in the wood at the back, he wriggled his hand around and drew out a small drawer.

“Empty!” he muttered, disappointed, holding the drawer so that the others could see.

Again he put his hand into the opening and drew out a second drawer that had been under the first one. This also was empty.

“One more chance.” He pulled out the bottom drawer. In this there was something. Holding it upside down, a small roll of paper fell out on the lid of the desk.

“A piece of parchment,” said Tuckerman, picking up the roll. He opened it out, holding it taut in his two hands.

All eyes focussed on the sheet, on which were scrawled, in a faint purplish ink, these lines:

I took the box

cliff where was

meaning to es

but they were

and so I hid

pocket in the

are two big

make a mark

Tuckerman read these words aloud, three times over. Then he gave a grunt. “Well, that’s that. And it’s not so very illuminating, is it?”

Ben took the parchment. “Somebody’s cut it across. See, the right hand words are close to the edge. How disgusting!”

David and Tom each handled the parchment, which was finally laid on the desk-lid, with the inkstand to keep it from curling up into its original tight roll.

David stroked his chin, pretending to be lost in thought. “Somebody took the box—to the cliff—but they were—and so somebody hid the box—in his pocket—there are two big—that make a mark. I gather from that line about the pocket that the box was pretty small.”

“It doesn’t say he hid it in his pocket,” Ben objected. “It might have been a pocket in the cliff just as well.”

“Who do you suppose he was?” asked Tom.

“Why, Peter Cotterell, of course,” David answered promptly.

“I don’t know about that,” said Tuckerman. “This handwriting doesn’t look like that of a man who was used to holding the pen. See how he’s gone over some of the letters several times, as if he wasn’t precisely sure how he ought to form them. Sir Peter was a well-educated gentleman. He must have known how to use a quill.”

“Perhaps he wanted to disguise his handwriting,” David suggested.

“Why would he want to do that?” Ben retorted. “Whoever wrote that meant to leave a record of what he’d done with the box. There wouldn’t be any sense in faking his handwriting—certainly not if he intended to hide the parchment away in a secret drawer of the desk.”

“What sense would there be in his cutting it in two then?” Tom inquired.

Tuckerman, who was sitting on the arm of a chair, threw back his head and laughed. “Here we are arguing about something that happened ever so long ago, and we haven’t the least idea why it happened this way.” He turned to the portrait on the wall and shook his finger at it. “You—or some of your household—knew how to make first-class puzzles, Sir Peter.” Then, as he swung around to the three boys, he added:

“My guess is that there’s a pocket in a cliff somewhere on this island, and that there is—or was—a box hidden in it.”

“Find the cliff,” said Tom.

Ben shook his head. “There are dozens of cliffs.”

“Well, you won’t find anything more in your mahogany man’s breast pocket,” Tom answered. “You can see for yourself it’s empty.”

“My idea is,” said David, “that we get the Argo and sail round the island till we sight a likely-looking cliff.”

“That appeals to me,” agreed Tuckerman, “and Tom can give me another lesson in how to handle a boat.”

The parchment was put in its drawer, the three drawers replaced, the cupboard pushed back and caught by its spring, and the desk-lid lifted and locked.

“I’d a heap rather hunt for clues out of doors on a day like this,” said David.

But Ben sat down on a divan. “I want to do a little thinking, fellows. You go along without me. Maybe I’ll go fishing for dinners off the rocks after a while.”

They laughed at Ben; but he would not be dissuaded. He wanted to do some thinking, and he meant to. “Stubborn as a mule,” said Tom. “He gets his mind set on a thing, and dynamite won’t budge him.”

So the others went down to the sailboat; and presently Ben, getting up from the divan, went out and cut himself a stick of willow. He brought it back and began to whittle shavings all over the hardwood floor of Cotterell Hall. He had seen men down on the Barmouth docks whittle shavings for hours, and he had copied the habit. He found it a great help when he wanted to think things out.

VI—THE CLIPPER SHIP

Ben Sully was a boy who would rather work out a puzzle than do almost anything else. He had a tremendous amount of patience, which possibly explains why he was such a successful fisherman, since he could wait longer, dangling a piece of bait in the water, than nine out of ten fishes could resist the temptation to find out what the bait tasted like. Any kind of a puzzle, from cut out sections of cardboard that fitted together to make a picture all the way to ingenious contraptions of metal links that didn’t want to come apart, was a delight to Ben. He had boxes and boxes of them stored away in a closet at home. He had invented secret codes and cryptograms by the score, and when he was only ten years old had constructed a private language of twenty-five words that he had taught to Tom and David and which the three of them had used among themselves to the great admiration and envy of all the rest of their school.

Naturally then Ben felt that this puzzle of Peter Cotterell’s treasure was right in his line, and the finding of the half-sheet of parchment whetted his appetite to discover more. He walked about the room, whittling shavings right and left, he sat down and kept on whittling, he stood up again, and since by now the willow-stick had been whittled down to almost nothing, he threw what was left in the fireplace.

That done, he went to a bookcase and took down from the shelf on top the old notebook that Tuckerman had found in his uncle’s bedroom. He thumbed the pages until he came to the place where Tuckerman had inserted a slip of paper. Ben read the words at the top of the page out loud. “Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket. That’s a saying my father handed down. What can it mean?” Ben looked at the desk. “Well, we’ve done that, anyhow.” He shook his head in deep thought. “I don’t understand why that piece of parchment wasn’t discovered before. They might not have taken the desk to be the mahogany man; but surely Crusty Christopher or his father would have known of those three little drawers. However, they might have found that writing and left it there. That’s possible, of course. Probably it didn’t tell them any more than it’s told us so far.”

Turning again to the notebook, he ran his eye down the page. Nothing but Christopher Cotterell’s comments on all sorts of subjects, nothing that interested Ben. He turned a page, two pages, another, and then his glance fell on this: “I’ve heard that the old clipper ship got some of the cargo that the mahogany man carried. But if she did, what use is that to us now? She sailed out of Barmouth Harbor during the Revolution.”

On and on down the page Ben’s eyes traveled, but lighted on nothing that caught his special attention. So he went back and reread that passage. Then he closed the book, replaced it on the shelf, stuck his hands in his pockets, and stared through the window.

“I wonder if there was a real mahogany man,” he mused, “and a real ship. There might have been. There were men from the West Indies in this part of the country in those days. One of them might have had valuables in his clothes, and part of the things he was guarding might have been carried off in the hold of a ship. Was there a real man, or was it that secretary? And how about the ship?”

Presently Ben walked around the drawing-room, as if he were searching for something. From there he went to the dining-room and the kitchen, and then upstairs to Christopher Cotterell’s bedroom. He looked into closets and behind curtains, he pulled open wardrobe doors and peered in at the shelves. But each time he shook his head, as much as to say: “There’s nothing there that I want.”

Under the slanting roof at the top of the house was an attic, already explored by Tuckerman and the boys. It was filled with every kind of thing, from an ancient lacquered Indian temple—the green and gold of the lacquer now sadly tarnished and chipped—to a collection of Red Men’s arrowheads, neatly fastened to a board by small straps of leather. Ben looked around at the strange medley of objects, thinking how many countries and how many different races of men had contributed to the furnishing of this attic; and then his roving eyes lighted on something that made them glisten—on a bracket against the wall sat the model of a ship.

Ben knew the model to be that of a Yankee clipper—three masts, loftily rigged, with three sky-sail yards, and a long mainyard. She was beautifully built, every detail complete, the deck and hull shining with varnish. “Hello,” sang out Ben, “clipper ship ahoy!” And pushing a box close against the wall he stepped up opposite the bracket.

In the deck of the model was a little lid. He pried this up with his knife-blade. There was just room for him to squeeze his fingers through, and when he drew them out again they held a small roll of paper.

“Yes,” said Ben, “it’s parchment,” and very much thrilled he took his find over to the window and smoothed it out.

The ink on this parchment was faint and purplish, like that on the sheet already found in the desk, and the left hand words were close to the edge. Ben read them aloud:

to the north

the boat

cape with it

off the shore

it in the

rocks. There

veins that

like a cross.

James Sampson.

“Good enough!” said Ben, and ran down the stairs to the first floor.

The little drawer in the secretary was again made to disgorge its half-sheet of parchment and Ben laid the two papers side by side on the desk-lid. They fitted perfectly; now their message was complete.

I took the box to the north

cliff where was the boat

meaning to escape with it

but they were off the shore

and so I hid it in the

pocket in the rocks. There

are two big veins that

make a mark like a cross.

James Sampson.

“Well, that’s clear enough,” said Ben, “though why anyone should cut James Sampson’s writing in two is more than I can understand.” He copied the words on a sheet of paper and put the two pieces of parchment in the secret drawer. “Now let’s see what we’ve got. Sampson meant to leave the island with his box at the northern end, but he saw some enemies waiting there, so he hid the box in a crevice where the rocks are marked like a cross. All right for Mr. Sampson. That’s easy sailing. But why didn’t some of the Cotterells find what was in the hold of that little ship’s model long before this? Funny—that is.” Again his brows bent in thought. “Was James Sampson the real mahogany man? Was there a real clipper ship?” At last he shook his head. “I don’t know. But at least I’ve found something.”

Ben left the house. It was noon, and warm. The others were sailing around the island; there was no knowing when they would be back. He debated whether to go fishing, and finally decided against it. Without any definite purpose in mind he took the path at the back of Cotterell Hall that led toward the little creek.

It was only a short distance across to the inlet where David and he had landed. He went through the bushes and trees until he saw the water before him. There was the creek and there was the marshy ground where they had found the footprints. He descended the bank to look at the marks again.

There were no footprints there now: they had utterly vanished!

Ben hunted along the edge of the creek, although he was positive where the marks had been. There was not a sign of them. There had been no rain to wash them out. The soggy ground was above the reach of the tide. There was only one explanation: someone had been there since David and he had landed and had carefully removed any sign of footsteps.

To discover footprints on a supposedly uninhabited shore is thrilling, but to discover that those footprints have disappeared is even more exciting. What did it mean? Well, to Ben it clearly indicated that the person who had made those marks in the first place had some very good reason for wanting no one to know that he had been there.

Cotterell’s treasure was an ancient mystery; but this was a new one, no older in fact than the day before yesterday. This was new matter over which to cudgel one’s brains, and Ben, sitting on the bank, gave deep consideration to it until he saw the sail of the Argo creeping up from the south.

Should he tell the others of his discoveries or not? He decided to keep them a secret, including the vanished footprints, for a short time at least. But he jumped up, and ran down to the shore, and sent an ear-piercing yell across the water. The answer was a wave from Tom, and presently the Argo drew closer inland and laid her course for a small, grass-topped headland on Ben’s side of the creek.

“Don’t jump; slide down, Benjie, slide,” directed Tom.

“And slide gently,” added David. “Not as if you were making for third base with the ball getting there before you. Remember the Professor’s at the helm and we don’t want to tilt the boat.”

“Don’t you worry,” sang out Ben. “I’ll drop in so you’ll think I’m as light as a feather.” And as the Argo slipped along under the headland he let himself down, lightly and easily, but, as it happened, right on the shoulders of David.

The big fellow gave a growl. Ben’s legs had somehow contrived to twine themselves around David’s neck, and Ben was sitting there on the broad shoulders, his hands on the other boy’s head.

“Hi there! Look out!” cried Tuckerman. “You’ll upset the whole shebang!”

But Tom came to the skipper’s rescue. A steadying hand on the tiller and the Argo moved out from the shore.

Slowly Ben pushed David forward until they both came down in a heap in the little cockpit. “Behave yourselves,” ordered Tom. “I’ve got a dipper here and I’ll souse you both with cold water!”

The threat was enough. The two sat up. David grinned. “The little feller’s all right; he’s got some muscle. I shouldn’t wonder if I could make a real man out of him some day.”

Under Tom’s teaching John Tuckerman was learning something about handling a sailing dory, just as Ben had given him lessons in flounder fishing, David in making flapjacks, and the three in various swimming strokes. It was true that he still regarded the Argo’s sail, when a sudden puff of wind filled it, as an inexperienced driver regards his horse when the animal shows signs of shying—his muscles grew tense, and he frowned, and stopped talking—but he didn’t ask Tom what to do and he managed to keep the dory fairly close to the course he intended. And he was a good sport! He didn’t try to crawl out of his mistakes by arguing about them; he admitted them with a grin, and that grin was always so whole-souled and hearty that it made one want to slap him on the back and tell him that he hadn’t really made a mistake after all.

When Tuckerman had the Argo well in hand again and could think of other matters, he said to Ben, “We’ve seen plenty of rocks and ledges, but nary a thing that could properly be called a cliff. A cliff, I take it, is something fairly high and mighty, not so steep as Gibraltar perhaps, but as large as a good-sized barn-door.”

“While we’ve been hunting for cliffs,” said David, “I suppose Ben has worked this all out. What are your conclusions, oh wise one?”

“Never you mind, my boy. The clever magician waits till he has everything in order before he performs his trick.”

“Ben’s got something up his sleeve,” put in Tom. “I can always tell when he talks in that grand way. But there’s no use trying to make him tell us, Dave. The way to make an oyster talk is to pay no attention to it.”

Ben said nothing, though the temptation was great as the Argo reached the northern end of the island, where high rocks came down to the water.

Tuckerman admitted these were cliffs, but there were a number of them, and how was he to tell which was the one they wanted? They sailed slowly along, watching the shore and speculating as to what the message in the desk referred. And while the other three talked Ben sat silent, trying to picture what had happened to James Sampson there more than a century before.

Ben had a good imagination, and it led him to see Sampson as a servant of Sir Peter Cotterell, a faithful serving-man, who always did what his master told him. When the men of Barmouth threatened to take Sir Peter’s treasure the old Tory gave some of his most valuable possessions to Sampson, and the latter carried them to this end of the island where he had a small boat that should carry him to the mainland. When he reached the shore, however, he saw other Barmouth men patrolling the coast in their own boats and so his escape that way was cut off. With quick wit he hid the treasures in a cleft of the rock and blocked up the hiding-place. Ben could see it all, even to Sir Peter, in knee-breeches and wig, commending James Sampson when the man returned and related what he had done. “Good and faithful servant,” said Sir Peter; “the rascals are outwitted again!” And doubtless Sir Peter took Sampson into the dining-room and poured him out a glass of rum. Ben wasn’t sure about that; it might not have been rum; but rum sounded well, it smacked of old-time adventure. Yes, probably it was rum; and Sampson had wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and laughed with his master at the thought of the men of Barmouth sitting out there in their boats, like so many cats waiting outside a mouse-hole.

“Come out of it, Ben! Wake up!”

Ben looked up with a start. Tom was laughing at him. “Where are you, Benjie? A million miles away!”

“No,” answered Ben, “I was listening to Sir Peter talking to a man you don’t any of you know anything about.”

“Your precious mahogany man?” asked Tom. “Don’t tell me you learned something more about him while you were up at the house.”

“He means the man with the big feet,” said David. “Did you find his prints in the house?”

“David,” said Ben solemnly, “you’re absolutely certain you saw those footprints of a man on the bank of the creek, are you?”

“Absolutely,” David stated. “You don’t think it was some animal wearing a man’s shoes, do you?”

“No. I thought you saw them. But I looked this morning in the same place, and there aren’t any prints there now.”

There followed a moment’s silence; then Tuckerman exploded a loud “What?”

“Vanished, vamoosed, flown away,” Ben said with a nod.

“My eye!” exclaimed David. “This is too horrible! Is the island haunted?”

“It is peculiar,” said Tuckerman, frowning at the shore.

“Look out!” sang out Tom.

The Argo, her helmsman unheeding his business, was slowly coming about, with a ledge of rock dead ahead. Tuckerman wheeled around, put the tiller over—the dory righted again.

“Ben,” said Tom, “don’t you spring anything like that on us again, with the Professor sailing this boat. If you’ve got any other fairy tales, you keep them till we’re on shore.”

“My fault,” said the skipper. “I’m learning. My first business is to bring us safe up to the dock.”

“And my first business,” added David, “is to get something to eat. Mysteries may come and go, but three square meals a day are always needful. How about that, Ben, my son? What did Sir Peter and this other friend of yours live on?”

“Rum,” said the solemn Ben.

“Rum! You’re a rum one! Are you sure you didn’t drink some of Sir Peter’s rum before you went to the creek and found that the footprints were missing?”

But Ben only smiled. He could afford to smile when he knew that he, and he alone, had a copy of James Sampson’s complete message tucked away in his pocket.

VII—THE TIGERS PLAY CAMP AMOUSSOCK

Needless to say, Ben would have liked to start out immediately after dinner to look for the pocket in the rocks that was marked with a cross, provided he could have found a good excuse to get away from the others; for he was still of a mind to keep his discovery a secret for the present. But the larder was in need of fresh supplies, and as soon as they had finished their cleaning up Tom announced that their immediate business was to sail across to Farmer Hapgood’s and buy some eggs and milk. So the Argo put out into the bay again, and soon the four campers, the sailboat safely moored at the Hapgood landing, were tramping up the road toward a gray-shingled cottage that had a couple of beautiful, tall elms at either side of it.

Mrs. Hapgood sold them eggs, milk, and butter, and some large loaves of freshly-baked bread. These were packed in a basket the boys had brought. When they came out from the house they stopped a few moments to chat with Mrs. Hapgood, and while they were talking two large automobiles swung in from a crossroad and raced past the farmhouse door.

The two cars were filled with boys, boys on the seats and on the running-boards. “They’re from Camp Amoussock, down along the shore a way,” Mrs. Hapgood explained. “They’re going to have a baseball game with the boys around here. My Sandy’s playing. He’s getting into his things upstairs now, but he’ll be down in a minute.”

The cars disappeared in a cloud of dust, and almost immediately a red-haired, freckle-faced young fellow, in a baseball suit, dashed out from the front door.

“Hello,” he cried, nodding to the others. “That crowd made as much noise with their horns as if they’d won the game already.”

“Pretty good team, are they?” asked David.

“Yes, they’re a good team,” said Sandy; “but mighty stuck on themselves. They come from a lot of different cities, and most of them play on their school nines. They’ve beaten us the last two summers. Gee, but we’d like to get back at ’em to-day!”

“Who’s on your team?” asked Tom.

“Well, we call ourselves the Tidewater Tigers. Most of us live around here. One, Billy Burns, comes from Barmouth. Native sons of New Hampshire against the strangers—that’s what my father says.”

“We know Billy Burns,” said Ben. “He’s a good batter.”

“Yes, he’s good,” agreed Sandy. “But they’ve got a pitcher who’s a corker. Lanky Larry they call him. He’s the goods all right—lots of speed and a curve. I’ll say he is! Fanned me three times last year.” Sandy clutched his bat. “Gee, but I’d like to sting him!”

“Let’s feel it,” said David. He took the bat and swung it several times. “A little light, but not bad,” he pronounced judicially.

“Say, why don’t you all come along? We’ll show you some real excitement. You can leave that basket here.”

The boys looked at each other, and suddenly Tuckerman burst out laughing. “Lead us to it, Sandy. I can see these three have got their tongues hanging out.”

“Well,” said David slowly, “I do hate to pass a good thing by.”

“He wants a sight of this Lanky Larry,” said Tom. “A good pitcher to Dave is like a red rag to a bull.”

Mrs. Hapgood relieved Tom of the basket. “You boys are native sons,” she said with a smile. “Go along and root for the Tigers.”

Up the road they went until they came to an open field marked out with a baseball diamond. The two automobiles were parked on one side, and on the other was a crowd of boys and girls, interspersed with a few older people. Already some of the Tigers and some of the Amoussocks were knocking out flies to their fielders.

“There’s Lanky, warming up,” said Sandy, pointing to a tall, dark-skinned fellow who was throwing a ball to a catcher in front of the automobiles. “They’re a swell lot, aren’t they? They’ve all got brand new suits this summer, with red and white stockings, and a red A on their chests.”

The Amoussocks did look very trim; more especially in contrast to the native sons, who were dressed in all sorts of suits, the most of them old and mud-stained.

“Here’s Billy Burns,” said Sandy; and as Tuckerman and the three boys went up to join the crowd, Sandy darted away to report himself to his captain.

Billy came up. “Hi, you fellows. What you doing here?”

“Digging clams for bait,” answered David. “Benjie wants to go fishing.”

“Come down to see us smear the strangers?” Billy continued, ignoring David’s joke.

“I hear that Lanky Larry’s a terror.” This from Tom.

“Terror’s the word,” Billy admitted. “Say, Dave, you think you’re some hitter in Barmouth. But you’ve never stacked up against his class.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said David. “I’ve sent some good men to the discard. Howsomever, it’s not up to me this afternoon to tackle the strangers. I’m neutral to-day.”

“Go to it, Billy!” said Ben. “We’re going to root for you. Of course we are. We’re not pikers.”

It was clear that this was a big day in the eyes of the community. A hay-wagon rattled up, loaded with empty boxes and a pile of boards. The boxes were stood on end on the ground and the planks placed across them, and the seats thus made were instantly filled by boys and girls. On the opposite side waved a large banner, white with a gigantic red A in the centre. There were shouts and cheers from both sides as the two teams gathered round the umpire; then the Tigers ran out to take the field and the first Amoussock batter stepped up to the plate.

The campers from Cotterell’s Island sat on the grass with the New Hampshire boys. Half the fun of watching any contest is in rooting for one side to win, and naturally the campers were backing the home nine. The Amoussocks had a superior air, partly due perhaps to their snappy suits and partly to the fact that they had beaten the Tigers each of the two summers before. And they knew how to play baseball; there was a snap and precision about their work that was the result of constant coaching in teamwork.

Against them the home team, mostly the sons of neighboring farmers, boys who had to coach themselves and only played together on Saturdays, showed at a decided disadvantage. They had plenty of fighting spirit and kept right up on their toes, playing for all they were worth, taking big chances in stealing bases and backing each other up on every throw. But they couldn’t hit Lanky Larry—not to any extent; and the Amoussocks could, and did, hit Sam Noyes, the Tiger pitcher.

David shook his head as the third inning ended. “That Lanky’s got ’em where he wants ’em,” he said. “He eases up a bit, and lets us get a hit or two; but watch him in the pinches. He can tighten up and shoot ’em over. Yes, siree,—nothing he likes better than a couple of them on the bases, and then putting over three strikes, simple as you please.”

Tom took a blade of grass from his mouth. “And he keeps grinning. Nothing riles a batter worse than that sort of a pitcher. ‘See how simple it is,’ he says with that smile. ‘Like taking candy from a kid to get a strike on you’—and he goes ahead and shoots one over while you’re planning how you’ll wipe the grin from his face.”

Billy Burns dropped down beside them. “Two to nothing,” he declared. “Sam’s doing mighty well, but Lanky’s doing better. It’s that in-shoot of his. I know just where it’s going, but hang it all! every blessed time I reach right out for it.”

“He’s got your goat,” said David. “You’re so all-fired mad that you don’t wait for the ball to get near you.”

“Huh, it’s easy to talk! I suppose you could wait all day.”

“Well, I wouldn’t get tied up tight, stiff as a stick. That’s the trouble with all our team. They’re so keen to hit they can’t wait. Larry’s got them going before they walk out there; and he knows it too, believe me!”

“I suppose you’d be as cool as a cucumber,” Billy jeered.

“As fat as a cucumber, you mean,” suggested Ben. “When Dave leans against the ball it’s like a ton of bricks.”

“We’re out again,” announced Billy, picking up his fielder’s glove. “We’re not so worse in the field; but golly, if we could only hit!”

The Tigers couldn’t hit, however. The crowd on the benches rooted as hard as they could, but the native sons stayed behind. And the visitors grew more dashing. They kept talking to each other on the bases, little remarks filled with self-esteem; it was easy to see they were very well pleased with themselves.

David kept pulling blades of grass, chewing them, spitting them out. Every time that a Tiger came to bat David felt as if it were he himself who was facing that smiling pitcher.

The fifth inning came and went; the score was still the same. Billy Burns, in spite of what David had told him, had struck out again.

Tom stood up and stretched. “No, boys, it isn’t our day—unless something different happens. I guess that old New Hampshire’s got to take the short end.”

Something did happen; but not what Tom expected. Billy Burns, in the outfield, running after a deep fly to centre, made a dive for the ball at full speed, stumbled, fell headlong, but held up the ball in his hand.

“Batter’s out!” cried the umpire.

The loyal rooters cheered. Billy, however, lay flat, and when, after a moment, he tried to get up, he sat down quickly again.

The other fielders ran over to him and stood him up between them. Billy held up one foot, put it down, gave a groan. “Twisted my ankle, I guess,” he muttered. He tried to take a step forward. “No go,” he added. “Hang it all, just my luck!”

Two fielders brought him in between them, Billy hopping on one foot. The Tigers held a consultation, while the Amoussocks threw the ball around. Then Sam Noyes, the Tiger captain, stepped over to David. “Billy’s down and out,” he said. “He can’t play any more. But he says you think you can hit their pitcher; and you’re from Barmouth, so that’d be all right. Want to take Billy’s place?”

David glanced up. He knew by the look on Sam’s face that the Tiger captain didn’t believe he could bat any better than the others. “All right,” he answered. “I didn’t mean to boast, you know; but I’ll do my darndest.”

“No one can do more,” murmured Tuckerman behind him.

David peeled off his coat and put on Billy’s glove. He lumbered out to centrefield while Sam Noyes explained the substitution to the Amoussock captain.

In the last half of the sixth inning David came to bat. Lanky Larry patted the ball caressingly, surveyed the new player from head to foot, and then grinned as if he had suddenly remembered a tremendous joke. David dug his feet into the earth of the batter’s box, wishing he had on the cleated shoes he wore when he played on his school team, swung his bat—one he had carefully selected from the varied assortment offered by the Tigers—and then grinned as if he also had thought of something very funny.

“I say, what’s the joke, you two fellows?” sang out a man who was standing back of the benches.

That made everybody laugh, with the result that Lanky, when he pitched the ball, threw it wide and missed the plate by a couple of inches.

“Ball one!” proclaimed the umpire.

“Make it be good!” yelled Ben.

David hitched up his trousers and lifted his bat again. Lanky patted the ball and smiled, but not so broadly. He shot the next one across the plate with speed and precision, David letting it go by without swinging at it.

“Strike one!” sang the umpire.

“You’ve got him, Lanky!” came a voice from the ranks of the Amoussocks.

“Oh dear!” sighed a girl on the Tiger’s bench, loud enough to be heard across the diamond; “I thought this fellow looked like he could knock a home run!”

There was a titter, a ripple of laughter, and Larry, fondling the ball, looked over in the direction of the girl and grinned from ear to ear.

The ball shot from his hand. There was a crack—sharp and stinging;—Larry reached out, missed the ball as it whizzed by—whizzed on over the bag at second base, sizzled on into the outfield. Centrefield couldn’t touch it; that ball simply wouldn’t stop, and didn’t until it struck a stone wall at the end of the field.

By the time the ball got back David was standing on third base, and the Tiger rooters were splitting the air with yells.

“Dave leaned against it all right, didn’t he?” said Ben to Tuckerman. “He came around on it just as easy; but when he struck he made every ounce tell.”

“He’d have had a home run if it hadn’t been for that stone wall,” said Tuckerman. “The field’s too short; it doesn’t give our Dave a show.”

Lanky Larry looked less amused. He frowned and grew thoughtful; with the result that the next Tiger up got a neat hit to right field, and David came trotting home.

But the inning ended on the next play, the Tiger being caught out at second base. The score was two to one, in the Amoussock’s favor. The crowd felt somewhat better as the Tigers took the field again. The Amoussocks, however, managed to get in another run at their turn at bat, and had a good lead of two.

The seventh and eighth innings repeated the same old story. Lanky was in form again, and none of the batters could hit him. And with the score at three to one the Amoussocks prepared to mow down their rivals in the last half of the ninth.

David was to be the third batter, and he swung two bats over his shoulder as he waited for his turn. Lanky knew what he was doing, was in fact watching him out of the corner of his eye, and looking forward to his next chance at the cocky David. Thinking what he would do to David he forgot the job in hand, and struck Sam Noyes on the arm. The umpire sent Sam to first. Larry scowled and bit his lip. The next Tiger got a hit, and Sam went to second.

The crowd jumped to its feet, both sides were rooting madly. “If only there was room for a home run!” sighed Ben. “Old Barmouth could do it! Keep cool, Dave my lad!”

David was perfectly cool, to all appearance at least, as he walked up to the plate. He smiled and gave the least little nod at the tall, dark-skinned pitcher.

A duel between these two;—that was what the crowd felt in the air. The fielders were hopping about, crouching, their hands on their knees; Sam and the Tiger on first base were flapping their arms, all ready to dash for the next base. But nobody looked at them; all eyes were on the two who were regarding each other with pleasant smiles.

“Strike one!”

David stepped back, a bit surprised, while the crowd gave a groan.

“Ball one!” There was a little ripple of satisfaction.

“But he’s got to hit it,” Tom muttered in Tuckerman’s ear. “A base on balls won’t do. The next fellow’d go out.”

And David knew he’d got to hit it, and kept telling himself not to tighten up. “Easy does it, easy does it,” kept singing over and over in his mind. If he tried too hard Lanky would get him just as he had gotten the others; and he knew perfectly well that was what Lanky intended that he should do.

“Strike two!”

Larry had outguessed him that time, giving him a slow drop. David eased his muscles, smiled his confident smile, settled evenly on his feet. This next would be the in-shoot. Larry would save that for the last. “Easy does it; take your time.” David looked at the pitcher, not angrily, not intently, just with a jovial dare.

And the bat, with David’s shoulders behind it, and his waist and his legs as well, met that ball as it curved in toward him fair and square on the nose. There was a mighty crack—the sort that sings in the ears and makes the pulses tingle—and away and away went the ball. Over the pitcher’s head, over the heads of the fielders; far out in the field it struck the ground at last and bounded over the stone wall. It brought up against a cow, that was lying down in a meadow, and it gave her such a bump that she rose in haste and went galloping away, not knowing what had struck her. And by the time the first Amoussock outfielder touched that ball Sam Noyes and the next Tiger and David had circled the bases and the game was won.

Billy Burns hopped over to David, forgetful of his sprained ankle. “Put it there, old scout!” he cried, holding out his hand. “I never saw such a hit! Gee whillikins! Dave, you’re the stuff all right!”

“Easy does it,” said David, who couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Easy!” exclaimed Billy. “You call that easy! I’d like to know what you do to a ball when you hit it hard!”

VIII—THE CANOE

David would have liked to have taken to his heels and beaten it down the road to the bay, but he was not allowed to do this. Not only the Tigers, but all that section of New Hampshire appeared to think that he had vindicated the honor of the country against the big cities, represented in this case by the boys of Camp Amoussock. Horny-handed farmers insisted on coming up and shaking his hand, slapping him on the back, inviting him to supper. And what tickled Ben more than anything else was to see the girl who had exclaimed, “I thought this fellow looked like he could knock a home run!” push her way through the crowd and thrust out her hand at David.

Ben nudged Tom. “Look at our brave boy now.”

The girl was saying, “I knew you looked like a winner. I’ve got a kid brother at home; he’s got a sore foot and couldn’t get over here; but I’m going to tell him how you soaked that ball and hit the old cow, and maybe he won’t be excited! What’s your name? He’ll want to know.”

No beet was ever redder than David’s face as he gave a sheepish grin. “David Norton,” he said. And as the girl insisted on shaking hands he touched her fingers gingerly. “Much obliged,” he stammered. “Hope the kid’s foot gets well again. Funny about that cow;—hope it didn’t hurt her.”

“I wouldn’t care,” said the girl, “if it broke one of her ribs. But don’t you worry, Mr. Norton. I’m right glad to have met you.” And she pushed her way out of the throng again, delighted to be able to tell her kid brother that she had shaken hands with the hero of the day.

“You may be a mighty batter,” said Ben, when David was able at last to rejoin his friends, “but when it comes to the girls you’re a beautiful imitation of a wooden Indian. You shake hands like a pump.”

“Oh, cut it out,” growled David, who always stood more or less in fear of girls, and hated to be teased about them. “I suppose you’d have made her some kind of a pretty speech; asked her to dance, perhaps.”

“I’d have looked as if I liked being told how fine I was. Oh, what a shame it is that nobody ever says such things to me,” sighed Ben, “when I’m the one that could really appreciate them!”

Sandy Hapgood now came up, and David, eager to be rid of any more talk about the game, hurried his friends away. “Looks like a thunderstorm,” he said, squinting at the sky, where dark clouds were rapidly rising.

They passed the meadow, where the cow was now peacefully chewing her cud again. She cast a reproachful eye at the boy in the baseball suit. “That’s the longest hit that was ever made on our field,” remarked Sandy. “And against Lanky Larry, too! Oh boy! Did you see Lanky after the game? He looked—well, he didn’t look so all-fired stuck on himself.”

“He’s a fine pitcher,” said David; “a mighty good one.”

They quickened their steps, for big drops of rain were beginning to fall. They turned in at the Hapgood farmhouse and stopped long enough for a word with Sandy’s mother. Tom swung the basket of provisions on his arm.

“Don’t you think you’d better wait a short spell,” said Mrs. Hapgood. “Looks to me as if we were in for a right smart shower.”

They looked at the sky—pierced now with frequent sharp jabs of lightning.

“It’s not raining hard yet,” said Tuckerman. “How about it, boys?”

“Let’s beat it,” said Tom.

Out in the road again they jogged down to the water, where the Argo was fastened. Casting her adrift, Tom took the tiller.

It was a real summer thunderstorm that had come up quickly—spurts of rain and banks of black clouds—at the end of the warm day.

But the boys were used to a wetting, and Tom had often sailed through a heavier downpour than this. David stretched himself out on a seat in luxurious comfort. “A shower-bath feels good,” he murmured. “All I want now is a good swim.”

The wind, however, wouldn’t stay in any one quarter; it kept jumping about as if it were trying to box the compass and succeeding pretty well. Tom had to keep changing course. The Argo zigzagged about like a darning-needle flying over a pond. And the thunder kept crashing louder, and the lightning opening bigger and bigger cracks in the violet-black of the sky.

“Hello, there’s a canoe!” sang out Ben suddenly.

Ahead of them, an eighth of a mile from shore, a cockleshell craft was dancing over the waves. There were two people in it, one at either end, and each was paddling fast.

“Ticklish business,” said Tuckerman. “There’s white water off that point. See how it jerks about. I say, Tom, couldn’t we get up near them?”

“Righto,” answered the skipper. “Confound those blooming gusts!”

If the Argo was having her hands full in standing up to the constant squalls that kept chasing over the water, the canoe was finding the struggle an even more difficult task. She careened, righted, almost disappeared in a wave. The Argo’s crew were now all at the rail, except the skipper, watching the little craft battle her way along.

Then Ben sang out: “Why, it’s Lanky Larry and the Amoussock captain! Gee, but that water’s rough!”

A lightning flash so vivid that it seemed to daze the crews of both the boats, was followed by a roll of thunder that shook the sea and the sky. Next instant the waves leaped up as if in a frenzy of fright. A great roller caught the canoe and twisted her nose about; another slapped her amidships; a third—All that the crew of the Argo saw was a swirl of wild waters where the little craft had been.

Tuckerman muttered something. Tom, with a shout of warning, brought the Argo about. Now there were to be seen in the water two heads, two tossing paddles, and the upturned bottom of the canoe.

The point of land was not far distant, and for some reason the boys in the water were striking out in that direction, possibly because they thought the sailboat, in such a squall, could not keep her course.

While Tom manoeuvred the Argo, the other three watched the swimmers. Both were making fair headway, the Amoussock captain somewhat in the lead. Then suddenly Larry threw up his hands and disappeared.

Tom swung the sailboat around, and almost instantly Ben and David, coats and shoes stripped off, dove into the water. For the moment the sea was calmer, and the two made the most of their chance. Hand over hand, in great spurts, they drew closer and closer to the place where Larry had vanished.

Tom said things to the sail, which would not fill as he wanted. Tuckerman clutched the rail, his eyes never leaving the swimmers. And at last—an eternity, it seemed to the watcher—the two boys reached the spot. A moment later, and in some way they had managed to draw Larry up between them.

By now the Amoussock captain had turned and was swimming back; and by now Tom had contrived to make the Argo behave. With a rush she arrived where the boys were struggling in the waves. Ben clutched at the side; with his other hand he helped David lift Larry up into Tuckerman’s arms.

Larry was hauled aboard. David and Ben climbed in. The other boy was pulled up from the water.

The Argo, restive, cavorting, commenced to dance again. “Can’t stop to pick up the canoe,” muttered Tom. “Thank Heaven, Lanky’s all right!”

Larry, very white and shivering, was rubbing the muscles of his legs. “It was a cramp,” he explained. “Doubled me up in a minute.”

Tuckerman put his coat around Larry’s shoulders. “Never mind, never mind,” he kept murmuring. “We’ll have you up at my house in a couple of jiffies.”

And, the wind blowing great guns, but keeping in a fairly steady direction, the Argo soon reached the island. By that time Larry, assisted by Tuckerman, had managed to rub the kinks out of his leg muscles, and was able to hobble ashore.

Cold, and drenched, and all of them shivering more or less, the party went up to the house. “The kitchen’s the place,” said Tuckerman. “There’s plenty of firewood there.”

Shortly the logs were blazing on the wide kitchen hearth, and Tuckerman, finding a tin of coffee in a cupboard, was making a steaming drink. Tom in the meantime had brought an armful of Christopher Cotterell’s clothes from a room abovestairs, and the boys who had been in the water put on dry things.

“Well,” said Larry, when he was warm and dry, and had swallowed half-a-cupful of Tuckerman’s steaming hot coffee, “I knew this David fellow was a good sport when I tried to strike him out this afternoon; though I tell you it made me mad when he stung that ball for a homer.”

“Don’t mention it,” said David. “A fellow’s got to do his duty.”

“You do yours, all right,” nodded Larry. “I guess we’ll have to forgive him now, won’t we, Bill?”

Bill Crawford, the Amoussock captain, gave his knee a great slap. “We’ll have to elect him to the club of good scouts, Lanky. And the rest of this bunch, too.”

“Pass the coffee pot,” said David.

Stretched at his ease in a cane-bottomed kitchen chair, Larry’s eyes roved around the room. “I thought there wasn’t anybody on this island this summer,” he said. “That’s the story they tell at the camp.”

“Oh yes, it’s deserted,” said Ben, “except for Professor Tuckerman and his three able assistants.”

“What is the Professor doing here?” asked Bill Crawford.

There was a momentary silence, broken by Ben’s solemn voice. “He’s busy polishing up the knocker of the big front door. I don’t know whether you noticed it when you came in, but there is a beautiful knocker, made of pure brass. He shines it every day.”

An amused snicker from Bill was followed by Larry’s asking another question.

“This is the Cotterell house, isn’t it? There’s some old yarn about it, seems to me I’ve heard.”

“Did you ever hear of an old house that didn’t have some yarn attached to it?” demanded Tuckerman.

“Change the subject, Lanky,” sang out Bill. “’Tisn’t fair to pry into the family’s secrets.”

“Right you are.” Larry stretched his arms. “Well, the question before us is how are we going to get back to camp before they find that canoe, and us missing?”

Tom went to the kitchen door and looked out. “The storm isn’t over yet,” he announced. “Couldn’t you lads stay to supper? If you will, I’ll sail you back afterwards. Likely as not the water’ll be smooth as a mill-pond in an hour or so.”

“They won’t be looking for you at your camp yet,” said Tuckerman. “They’ll think you landed somewhere, and are waiting for the squall to blow over.”

“We’ll stay to supper,” said Bill. “It would be a shame to have you fellows get wet again on account of us.”

David jumped up. “We’ve got provisions stowed away right here in the kitchen.” Rolling up his sleeves, he gave directions to his assistant cooks.

The kitchen of Cotterell Hall had never seen as much activity as it did in the next half hour, with the result that a sumptuous feast was soon set out on the table.

They ate as if they hadn’t tasted food for a week, cleaned up, and trooped out to the front door. The squall was over, a light wind was blowing—not enough to ruffle the water—and stars were beginning to shine in a cloudless sky.

The Argo’s sail was raised, and the skipper sent her across the bay to the place where the canoe had upset. Search soon found the canoe rocking in the surf on a sandy beach of the mainland. She was righted and her painter fastened to a cleat at the stern of the sailboat, and the Argo took a course alongshore. Presently, rounding a point, the crew saw a bonfire at Camp Amoussock lighting a stretch of woods.

They all went ashore, and found the Camp just about to start out on a search for the missing boys. The visitors had to stay a while and be entertained by their hosts, and it was not until the moon was high in the sky that the Argo again pushed her nose across the water, a southernly breeze filling her sail.

As they came abreast of the western end of their island another sailboat, looking like a great white moth in the moonlight, went scudding away over the silver sea.

“Hello,” said Ben, “what is she doing here? Poaching on our preserves, it seems to me.”

“The harbor’s free to everyone,” said David. “I don’t suppose even Crusty Christopher objected to people sailing boats on the water, if they didn’t try to land on his shore.”

“Lanky knew there was some old yarn about the Cotterell house,” Ben continued, paying no attention to David’s remark. “And if he knew, why shouldn’t others?”

“Well,” said Tom, “what’s the answer?”

“The answer is that we’re likely to have callers. Not the kind that leave their visiting-cards, but the sort that snoop around when nobody’s home.”

“Thieves?” questioned David.

“No,” said Ben, “I didn’t mean thieves exactly. Detectives come nearer to what I meant.”

Tuckerman chuckled. “Benjamin, you’re a wonder! You never let go of an idea once you get your teeth in it, do you? I’d forgotten all about the treasure. I was studying the stars, and Dave was thinking about baseball, and Tom about the course he’s steering; but you—why, you were puzzling your wits about Sir Peter and the mahogany man, and goodness knows what else. Keep it up, Ben my boy. That’s the road to success.”

And Ben, thinking of what he had found that morning, grinned but said nothing. If he could only work out the scheme he had in his mind, he felt that he would be prouder than if he knocked home runs against the very best baseball pitchers in the major leagues.

IX—THE CHEST IN THE ROCKS

John Tuckerman was leaning on his arm and looking out at the sparkling, gleaming blue-green water when Ben Sully woke next day. Ben kept still and watched him, as he had watched him on several other mornings. Tuckerman looked so absorbed, so intent. He seemed to be sniffing the air. And Ben, to whom a summer morning on the New England coast presented no novelty, appreciated that to this man everything about him seemed like a part of wonderland.

The only sounds were the lapping of waves and the calling of birds in the woods back of the camp. A great gray-white gull was soaring far out over the water, slanting first this way, then that, as though he were trying his wings before he made a real flight. Nearer shore two white terns circled round and round, and then dropped straight in the bay, their sharp beaks darting at fish. The shore of the mainland rose in a green swell, on which pearl-colored fleecy clouds seemed to be floating, and the shore of the island itself, above the beach, was a tangle of bay and juniper and wild roses, all shades of greens and pinks in the early sun.

Ben saw this through Tuckerman’s eyes, and felt the spell of enchantment. Then David rolled over, stretched his arms, grunted; and the spell was broken. A pine-cone, tossed by Ben, landed on David’s nose. “Hi there, you mosquito!” exclaimed the nose’s owner. He threw the pine-cone at Tom. “Time to be up, lazybones. Breakfast in half-an-hour, and those who aren’t down when the bell rings won’t get any!”

“The tub’s mine first!” shouted John Tuckerman, and pulling off his pajamas he took a few leaps across the grass and raced over the sand to the water, where he ducked under a wave and bobbed up again, splashing and yelling.

Ben, then David, then Tom, followed, making more noise between them than all the wildfowl on the island put together. The water was cold, but fine for a morning swim, and when, after fifteen minutes, the four came out on the beach again, they seized the Turkish towels that hung conveniently on a juniper, and rubbed themselves to a brilliant lobster-like glow.

“That particular swimming-pool,” said John Tuckerman,—“I refer to the one commonly called the damp spot, or the ocean,—beats all the porcelain-lined tubs it has ever been my privilege to bathe in. It’s true there’s only cold water; but come out into this sun for a few minutes and you’ll be hot enough. Now it seems to me”—but at that particular moment he began to pull his flannel shirt over his head, and when his words again became audible he was saying “shake well, and take a teaspoonful in a glass of water every morning before breakfast.”

Breakfast! Magic word after a swim in the ocean! The boys jumped into their clothes and set to work. For the next half-hour the thoughts of all the campers were centred on food.

But as soon as his plate was cleared Ben began to consider another matter. He quoted lines to himself, “I took the box to the north cliff.... I hid it in the pocket in the rocks. There are two veins that make a mark like a cross.” Very good; that was plain. And as soon as the after-breakfast chores were done he said, rather self-consciously, “I know where there’s a pool full of cunners,” and picking up his fishing-rod and tackle, he hurried into the woods.

He looked back over his shoulder once or twice, but no one was following him. Through the thickets, dappled with sunshine, he went at a brisk trot. This brought him out on the north shore, where the high rocks towered above the beach like a line of battlements. He swung himself over a cliff and dropped lightly on to the sand. Leaving his fishing-rod in a convenient place where he could pick it up quickly if anyone came by, he began his search.

There were crevices in the rocks, and each of these had to be explored. Bushes and trailing vines, growing from little footholds, covered the seaward surface of many of the cliffs. But Ben, thrilled with the sense of exploration, and persevering by nature, stuck to his task, and was rewarded at last by finding what he sought, two veins of a light yellow color that made the distinct mark of a cross.

“That’s it!” he muttered, excited. “And, by Jove, there’s the pocket!”

Down on his knees he went, and thrust his head into an opening. He pushed himself forward by digging his toes in the sand. And soon his outstretched hand touched a large chest, he felt metal bands about it, he pushed it, but it was wedged in tight.

Presently he pulled himself out, stood up, and considered the situation. He had found the box that James Sampson had hid in the rocks. His first thought was what a tremendously strong man Sampson must have been to carry such a chest all the way from Cotterell Hall to this north shore. However, Sampson might not have carried it; he might have brought it in a cart or by some other means. And his next thought was, how could Benjamin Sully get that chest out of the pocket.

That took a good deal of thinking, and he sat down and considered it from various angles.

Into his brown study two voices from somewhere back of him made interruption abruptly.

“He’s fishing for cunners on the dry sand! First time I ever saw that done. He just coaxes ’em out of the water.”

“Keep quiet! He’s counting the grains of sand. He’s got up into the millions.”

“He’s thinking up a way to hypnotize the fish. Stare at them hard enough, and they’ll swim right up on the beach.”

“He’s copying King Canute. Telling the waves to go back.”

“He’s working out a time-table for the tides.”

Ben turned his head. “As a matter of fact, the thing I’m thinking about is a thousand times more interesting than anything you’ve guessed.”

The two voices were those of David and Tom.

“I’ve always said,” observed David, “that you can’t catch our Benjie napping. He seems to be sitting there like a bump on a log, but he’s really thinking of the most remarkable things.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” nodded Tom, “if it was something utterly prodigious—like why the water’s wet or fish have scales.”

“No,” said Ben pleasantly, “I was wondering how I could get Peter Cotterell’s treasure chest out of the place where his servant James Sampson hid it. It’s rather too heavy for me to handle by myself.”

The other two stared. “Benjie oughtn’t to have come out here without a cork helmet,” said David. “I suppose he’s got a sunstroke.”

“Sampson put the chest there,” he concluded.

“What are you driving at?” asked Tom. “Have you really found the treasure, Ben?”

Ben pointed negligently toward the cleft in the rock. “There,” he answered. “See that yellow cross? That marks where he hid the chest.”

“You’re dreaming!” David snorted.

“How do you know?” questioned Tom.

Ben took from his pocket the piece of paper that bore James Sampson’s message. He read it aloud, slowly, giving each word full weight. “Sampson put the chest there,” he concluded. “And there it is now. I crawled in and found it.”

Even David was impressed by that. He got down on his knees and poked into the cavern, and when he stood up he nodded solemnly.

“There is something in there,” he said. “I shouldn’t wonder if Ben might be right.”

“Well,” said Tom, “there’s a rope in the sailboat. We left her around the point.” He hurried away.

In a few minutes he was back, with a coil of good-sized rope.

Taking an end of this, Ben again crawled into the opening and made the rope tight about the chest. Then the three boys took hold of the other end of the rope and began to pull. The sand was not very secure footing and the chest was heavy, but gradually they pulled it out. They discovered it was a box made of hard wood, with iron fastenings.

“Well,” declared Tom, “if James Sampson carried that all the way here by himself, all I’ve got to say is that he deserves his name.”

“These mahogany men,” added David, “supposing that the fellow who carried this chest was a mahogany man—must belong to a race of giants. I wonder if it was a mahogany man who made those footprints on the edge of the creek?”

Ben had picked up a flat stone, shaped something like a large Indian arrowhead, and another round stone; and inserting the first stone under the lid of the chest, he struck it several blows with the other.

Tom watched him a moment. “You can’t pry it open that way,” he asserted. Looking along the beach, he selected a big, egg-shaped stone and brought it back to the chest. Lifting it in both hands, he dropped it on the iron band just above the lock. The iron snapped apart. The stone bounced off on the sand.

David and Ben seized the lid. With a creaking of hinges it was lifted. There before them was a light blue coat, gold-braided, a three-cornered hat of felt, a sword in a tarnished scabbard.

“My eye!” exclaimed Tom. “Just clothes! Why in the world did he want to hide such things?”

Ben was flinging them aside. Underneath were other garments, several suits of the style worn by gentlemen in Revolutionary days, and then the oddest collection of bric-a-brac, candlesticks, pewter pitchers, a silver snuff-box, a couple of lacquered platters, and even some china plates.

David started to laugh. “Well, if that’s the Cotterell treasure, I can’t give it much! I don’t see why the Barmouth people wanted to lay hands on it, or why Sir Peter and his precious James Sampson were so eager to get away with it. Why, it’s regular junk-shop stuff. I don’t suppose the whole collection, if they’d sold it at auction, would have fetched enough to feed a soldier a week.”

Ben looked very much crestfallen. He fingered the suits, the snuff-box, the platters. “No,” he said, “it does seem mighty queer. And to think that Sampson brought these things over here, intending to take them away in a boat! I don’t understand it at all.”

“Never mind, Benjie.” Tom slapped his friend on the shoulder. “You found the chest anyway.”

“That’s right. You did,” said David. “You worked out the puzzle. It isn’t your fault if the treasure was just old junk.”

Ben was scratching his head. “But surely Sir Peter did have some valuable plate,” he argued. “The people of Barmouth knew that. Then what did he do with it?”

“Maybe he melted it down himself,” said David. “Anyhow it isn’t in that chest.”

“That’s so.” Ben picked up the snuff-box and stuck it in his pocket. “Where’s the Professor?”

“He went up to the house. Said he was going to write a letter,” Tom answered. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, old sport. I’ll take you out in the Argo and let you have some fishing.”

The chest was shut again and pushed back into the pocket. Ben regained his fishing-rod and tackle, and the three embarked in the sailboat. And presently the satisfaction of pulling flounders on board made Ben forget everything else.

When they returned to camp, with a fine catch of fish, they found John Tuckerman busy preparing dinner. Ben told his story, while Tuckerman listened with the greatest interest. “It does seem odd,” he said, when Ben had finished. “Most peculiar, in fact.” He mused a moment, his eyes regarding the water. “But then my good old ancestor Sir Peter was an odd kind of fish. I wonder now—do you suppose he could possibly have been planning to have a joke at the expense of his Barmouth neighbors?”

“You mean,” said Tom, “that he might have hid those things expecting the neighbors to find them?”

Tuckerman nodded. “It might have been so. Perhaps he, or James Sampson, even expected the men in the boat that was waiting off shore to find where Sampson hid the chest.”

“But why all this puzzle then about the pieces of parchment Ben found in the house?” asked David.

“Well, I’ll admit,” said Tuckerman with a smile, “that it’s not as clear as a pikestaff. Only Sir Peter does seem to have liked his joke. However, the bacon’s sizzling.” Brandishing a fork in his hand, he bent over the frying pan.

That afternoon Tuckerman said that he had an important letter to mail, and the campers sailed to Barmouth. Tuckerman went to the post-office, and each of the boys dropped in on his family. Ben had a chat with his mother, then told her he must do an errand. This took him into a side street, where there were a number of small, unpretentious shops.

He stopped before a window that was filled with old furniture, andirons, odds and ends of china. He opened the door, and a little bell tinkled somewhere back in the house, and after a moment a small, wizened-faced man, wearing a big blue checked apron, came into the room.

“Afternoon, Mr. Haskins,” said Ben.

“It’s Ben Sully, ain’t it?” said the proprietor. “Well, are you goin’ to get married, an’ want a nice set of furniture to go to housekeepin’ with?”

“Not to-day, Mr. Haskins.” Ben acknowledged the joke with a grin. “No, sir, I’m more interested just as present in what you call antiques.”

“Antiques, eh? Well, what was you thinkin’ of wantin’? I’ve some nice three-legged kettles, a soup tureen that came over in the Mayflower, an ivory back-scratcher that hails from India. Just look about, an’ tell me what you want.”

“I want you to tell me something about this.” Ben put his hand in his pocket and drew out the snuffbox he had taken from the Cotterell chest.

“This?” Mr. Haskins took the snuff-box, pulled his spectacles down from his forehead on to his nose, walked nearer the window, and peered at the small silver box.

“What do you want me to tell you?” he asked after a moment.

“Is it a real old one?”

“Certainly it is. See that monogram? That’s the finest embossed work.” Mr. Haskins gave a chuckle. “I ought to know about that box, I ought.”

“Why ought you?” asked Ben.

“Well, you see, this here particular snuff-box has been in my shop some time. I sold it to a customer just about a week ago.”

“I thought perhaps you had,” said Ben, trying hard not to show his excitement.

X—LIGHTS ON THE ISLAND

The information that Ben obtained that afternoon from Mr. Haskins concerning his sale of the snuff-box gave a new direction to his thoughts. He could not follow up this new clue just yet, however, without telling the others, and this he didn’t want to do. They would be waiting for him aboard the Argo, and so, after a fifteen-minute talk with the shopkeeper, he hurried away to join them at the wharf.

One other thing he did, however, before the sailboat left Barmouth, and that was to get a canoe he owned out from a shed on the waterfront and fasten it behind the Argo. If he had the Red Rover with him—he had laboriously painted that name in orange letters on a scarlet background on the canoe—he would be able to come and go about the harbor as he wished and to leave the island without explaining his plans, as he would have to do if he wanted to take the sailboat.

“What’s the idea?” asked David, who never overlooked a chance to ask a question. “Are you going to teach the Professor how to paddle a canoe?”

Ben nodded. “I thought that ought to be part of his education. The Red Rover’s steady enough for any beginner to paddle.”

Tuckerman looked askance at the little craft bobbing up and down in the wake of the Argo. “Any canoe’s unsteady enough for me to upset in, I guess. However, I like Ben’s idea. It was thoughtful of you, my lad.”

At that they all laughed, for whatever Ben’s reason had been for wanting the canoe at the island it was fairly obvious that he was not taking it there to further John Tuckerman’s seafaring education.

That evening, however, Tuckerman reminded Ben of his suggestion. The water was calm, the breeze was light. “How about a paddle?” he asked. “Just along the shore? I promise not to rock the boat.”

“Righto,” said Ben. “Come on.”

They went to the landing-stage at the pier and put the canoe in the water. Ben got in at the stern and balanced the boat while Tuckerman gingerly stepped in and squatted down at the bow.

“Not much room for long legs,” said Tuckerman. “I’ll have to tie mine up in a bow.”

“You’ll get used to it soon,” encouraged Ben. “I’ll do the steering. All you have to do is to put your paddle in, give a long, slow push, and take it out again.”

“Sounds easy enough.” Tuckerman tried to shift the position of his knees, with the result that the canoe rolled over almost far enough to ship a gallon of water. He threw his weight the other way, and the canoe nearly capsized.

“Plague take it!” he muttered. “It’s worse than walking a tight-rope!”

“Easy there, easy,” laughed Ben. “First rule in a canoe is never to move quickly. When you shift your weight, do it slowly. Pretty soon it’ll come as natural as riding a bicycle.”

“Riding a balky horse, you mean,” said Tuckerman. “All right; I’ll remember.” He dipped the tip of his paddle into the water and gave a tiny shove.

Ben gave a long sweep with his paddle, a dexterous twist at the end of the stroke, and the Red Rover floated smoothly away from the landing-stage.

With Ben’s coaching, Tuckerman soon was able to paddle fairly well. He found it somewhat difficult to keep the bow evenly balanced, but as Ben anticipated his movements and shifted automatically from side to side, Tuckerman gained confidence and soon was sitting steady.

They paddled along shore, past the camp and on to the upper end of the island. Tuckerman, feeling more and more at ease, was delighted with the motion, with the gentle swish of the water, with the still, starlit night, with the panorama of beach and cliffs and woods as they floated by.

“Let’s go on around the island,” he suggested. “This isn’t real work at all.”

Ben smiled to himself. He knew that Tuckerman would discover next morning several muscles in his back and shoulders that he wasn’t accustomed to feeling. But the night was perfect for a paddle. “All right,” he agreed. “No, don’t you try to do any steering. The man in the stern does that.” With a couple of twists he turned the bow to the north. “There,” he said, “there’s the cliff where Sampson hid the chest in the pocket.”

Tuckerman turned to look. The Red Rover wobbled, slanted.

Ben shifted and righted her quickly. “Hi there!” he warned.

“My mistake,” said the penitent Tuckerman. “I see that it won’t do for me to think of two things at once when I’m out on this lily-pad.”

“Paddle—quickly now,” Ben ordered. “But not too quickly. There’s a rip off that ledge.”

They passed the rip and came into smoother water. Presently they were on the ocean side of the island. “There’s the creek where we saw the footprints,” said Ben.

“Don’t point out anything else to me,” said Tuckerman. “If I move my left leg I can’t get it back in place.”

By the time they reached the southern end of the island the bow-paddler felt as if the muscles of his knees were tied in hard knots. “Do you mind,” he said in a tone of apology, “if I stop paddling for a couple of minutes and unwind myself? I’ll move very slowly.”

“Go ahead,” said Ben. “I’ll balance the canoe.”

Tuckerman pushed himself back, then very carefully unwound his long legs, stretched them out with an exclamation of relief, rubbed the muscles, and then readjusted himself in a new and more comfortable position. “I suppose to be a really proficient canoeist,” he observed, “one ought to be made of rubber. There—how’s that? Didn’t I do it cleverly?”

“Wonderful!” said Ben.

Tuckerman picked up his paddle again, and, proud of his ability to move without rocking the boat, stuck the paddle in the water and gave a mighty sweep. The bow swung around, rocked, tilted; Tuckerman pressed his arm hard on the left-hand gunwale.

“Hold on, Professor!” cried Ben. “We don’t want to head out into the ocean. Keep your paddle out of the water. Steady there!” With alternate strokes to right and left Ben soon had the canoe back on its course parallel to the shore.

“I am a duffer,” muttered Tuckerman contritely.

“Oh no, you’re not,” said Ben. “You’re doing very well. Only you must remember to let the stern man do the steering. A little more practice and you’ll find the Red Rover as easy to manage as falling off a log.”

“Falling off a log is good,” was Tuckerman’s comment. “Falling into the water would be more like it.”

They rounded the lower end of the island and came back on the bay side. They had almost reached the landing-stage when Ben said, “See, there’s a light at Cotterell Hall. It’s in the front door. It looks like a pocket flashlight. I suppose Tom and David went up there to get something.”

Cautiously Tuckerman looked in the direction of the house. There was a small circle of light. It moved away from the door; after a minute it shone through a window.

“I thought I locked the doors,” he said. “However, they may have climbed in through a window.”

The light disappeared. The canoe floated smoothly up to the stage, and Ben held it level while Tuckerman climbed out. Ben jumped up lightly. Then they both pulled the Red Rover out and turned it bottom side up.

They went up the walk to the house. The front door was shut, and when Tuckerman turned the knob he found that the door was locked. He opened it with his own key, and the two went in. The hall and the rooms were dark, there was no sound of voices or footsteps anywhere.

“That’s funny,” said Tuckerman. “We didn’t see Tom and David come down the path. Maybe they went out the back way.”

But the kitchen door was locked, and when the two opened it and looked out there was no sign of the others leaving in that direction.

“I wonder what they’ve been up to?” said Ben. “Playing some joke perhaps.”

They returned to the camp, and there were Tom and David, toasting marshmallows on long sticks over a bed of hot coals.

“We were betting ten to one,” said David, “that you’d come back nice and wet. Want to dry your clothes at the fire?”

“No, thanks,” answered Tuckerman. “We’ve been all round the island, and we didn’t ship a thimbleful of water.”

Tom glanced at Ben. “The Professor hasn’t been fooling us, has he? He didn’t know all about handling a canoe, did he?”

“No,” said Ben with a smile. “He didn’t know all about handling a canoe when we started. But he knows almost everything about it now.” Then, as he sat down cross-legged on the grass, Ben said carelessly, “We saw your light in the house. I suppose you climbed in through a window.”

“Saw our light in the house?” Tom echoed. “What are you giving us?”

His tone was perfectly sincere. Ben saw that he wasn’t joking.

“Well, we certainly saw some light,” Tuckerman stated. “It looked like a pocket flashlight, at the front door and at one of the windows.”

“Not guilty,” said David. “Are you sure it wasn’t a firefly?”

“You two have been right here ever since we left?” asked Ben.

“Yes,” answered the two in chorus.

“And you haven’t seen anyone land, or heard anyone?” Ben continued.

“No,” came the chorus.

Ben looked at Tuckerman. “Well, someone was in the house. How about that, Professor?”

“Somebody was. But I can’t imagine what they could have been doing. I don’t suppose they were thieves.”

“It’s my opinion,” said David sagely, “that they were hunting for the famous Cotterell treasure. And now that you’ve found it, Benjie, I’d suggest that you put up a big placard, stating ‘The treasure has been found. No seekers need apply.’”

“Very good,” said Ben. “Only the real treasure hasn’t been found, you see.”

“What!” exclaimed David.

“No,” said Ben, “that’s my humble opinion.” And then, as if he wanted to change the subject, he added, “I’m going to toast one large, juicy marshmallow, and then I’m going to turn in.”

Half-an-hour later the moon, riding up in the sky, looked down through the branches and saw that the four campers were sound asleep. There was the lap-lap of waves, the gentle purring noise as the water washed over pebbles, and in the tops of the pines a soft lullaby of the breeze.

Tom stirred, turned, opened his eyes. It seemed to him that something had waked him. He looked about; there was only the familiar scene. He gave a satisfied grunt and curled his head in the hollow of his arm. Then he looked around again to make sure that they had put out all the embers of the fire. And at some distance through the woods, in the direction of the pier, he saw a light that moved.

Immediately he remembered what Ben and Tuckerman had said about seeing a light in the house. Noiselessly he got up, pulled on his shoes and stuck his arms in his jacket. Through the woods he stole, stealthy as an Indian. The light had disappeared, but he thought he heard the sound of feet on the planks of the pier.

He came to the trees nearest to the clearing about Cotterell Hall. The house was dark; there was no sound or light in the neighborhood. But he was convinced that there had been someone there, and presently he darted forward and crossed the open space to the shelter of the porch.

After a few minutes he stole to the corner of the house, and now his search was rewarded. Someone was leaving by the kitchen door. In the moonlight he counted three figures. They were heading away from the shore, toward the grove at the back; he guessed that they intended to take the path that led down to the creek.

Tom followed them at a distance. They went through the woods, and now he saw the moonlight on the water. They had reached the head of the creek, but they didn’t stop there. They went on along the bank to the higher shore where the creek flowed into the ocean. Then for the first time Tom noticed the silver tip of a sail. Lying flat behind a bush, he watched the three men go to the rim of the shore, and, one after another, slide over the edge where the boat waited.

He wanted to see that boat, to get a closer view of the men; but there were no bushes between him and the shore. Now the tip of the sail was bobbing, now it was filling out; presently it was moving to the southward, a white wing, still as a floating gull.

He crept forward and watched. The boat was stealing away, soon she was only a dancing speck of white in the glittering moonpath. He had no way of identifying her or of making out her crew. He noted that she did not turn or tack when she came to the lower end of the island, but held on to a course that would bring her south along the main shore.

Tom stood up and eased his feelings by a long whistle. “What were they doing here? It must be something mighty important,” he said aloud.

No answer occurred to him, and after watching the sail until it disappeared in the distance he turned and walked back to the house.

He tried both the doors; they were locked. He looked at the lower windows; they were all closed. He went down to the pier; the Argo was there and the Red Rover; there was nothing to tell him what these night-time prowlers had been doing.

He went back by the beach to the camp. As he stepped up on to the bank Ben opened his eyes and sat up. “Hello,” he said sleepily. “Why, Tom, what are you doing?”

“Sh-ssh,” murmured Tom.

Ben rubbed his eyes, crawled out of his bed, caught Tom’s arm, and pulled him down to the beach. “What were you doing?” he demanded in an insistent whisper.

“Well, I saw a light, and I went to find out what it was.”

“Yes? And you saw them, did you?”

“Saw whom, Benjie?”

“Saw the pirates, did you?”

“The pirates! You’re half-asleep. What are you talking about?”

Ben nodded his head. “Oh, I know something about them.”

“Well, I saw three men. They went away in a sailboat.”

“Who were they? What did they look like?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get very close.”

“I wish you’d taken me along with you. I’ll bet I’d have found out something.”

That nettled Tom, and he answered more loudly, “Oh, you would, would you? I thought you knew all about them.”

“Sh-ssh,” muttered Ben. But David had wakened now, and his voice boomed out, “What are you two lobsters quarreling over?”

“Nothing,” said Tom. “Keep quiet, or you’ll wake the Professor.”

Tuckerman sat up. “You don’t mean to say it’s morning!” he exclaimed.

“No, it’s not,” Tom answered. “Can’t a fellow take a stroll in the moonlight without rousing the whole town?”

“Stroll in the moonlight!” chuckled David.

“Go on with your beauty sleep, Professor. That’s what I’m going to do. Let the two lobsters fight it out.”

“All right,” said the sleepy Tuckerman, nestling down again.

Tom turned to Ben. “So you know something about these pirates, do you?” he asked. “What were they doing here?”

“That,” said Ben, “is going to take some thinking. You see what you can find out, and I’ll see what I can. They won’t be back here to-night. And I’m too doggone sleepy to argue anyhow.”

XI—THE MAN IN GREEN

Ben, having explained to the other three campers that he had important business to attend to in Barmouth, set out in the Red Rover directly after breakfast the next morning. He paddled the canoe across the bay, landed at the town wharf, and went up the main street to Barmouth’s one good hotel. He knew the clerk, Mr. Pollock, and after saying “Good morning” very politely, he helped himself to a small folded automobile map from a pile that lay on the counter for anyone to take.

“Going motoring, Ben?” asked the clerk. “Seems to me I heard you were camping on Cotterell’s Island. How are things over there?”

“Fine,” said Ben; and in return he promptly asked a question. “Had many automobile parties for dinner the past few days?”

“Quite a lot. Yes, business is pretty good. They like our special broiled lobster dinners.”

Ben leaned on the counter, copying the familiar manner he had noted in hotel guests. “You had a party on Tuesday, didn’t you? A big red car, with a Massachusetts license, driven by a man in green-checked knickerbockers?”

“Expect me to remember that?” Nevertheless, Mr. Pollock scratched his chin and considered the question. “Yes, seems to me I do recall such a party. Somebody said those knickerbockers were loud enough to be heard all the way to Boston.” The clerk thumbed the pages of the hotel register and presently pointed out a name. “That’s the fellow, Joseph Hastings. He comes from Cleveland, Ohio. There were four in his party.”

“And he came in a big red car, with a silver eagle on the radiator cap?” Ben persisted.

“Well, now, I can’t say as to that.” But Mr. Pollock, being a good-natured man and having nothing else to do at the moment, scratched his chin again, and again considered. “I do think of something. He told me he’d punctured a tire and asked me the best place to go to buy a new one.”

Ben nodded. “I suppose you told him Hammond’s?”

“You’re right. I did. Frank Hammond is a good friend of mine.”

Then Ben changed the conversation to the subject of the big league pennant race, in which the clerk was very much interested, and after some further chat, departed from the hotel.

Frank Hammond knew Ben also, and was not too busy that morning to exchange a few words with him. After a number of questions about the state of the roads in the neighborhood of Barmouth, Ben said, “Mr. Pollock tells me you sold a tire to Joseph Hastings, of Cleveland, Ohio, Tuesday of this week.”

“That’s so,” said Mr. Hammond, “I did. I sold him a couple of those big Vulcan tires for his rear wheels. Is he a friend of yours?”

“I don’t know him very well,” Ben evaded. “But I hear he’s a fine fellow. Is he touring along the coast?”

“No. He said he was staying at a place called the Gables, down on the Cape Ann Road. Wonderful car he’s got. He told me he’d had it built according to his own ideas.”

“Big red car, with a silver eagle on the radiator cap?”

“That’s the bird. Yes, sir, he must be a millionaire.”

When he left the dealer in automobile supplies Ben went to his uncle’s house and secured the loan of a small, ramshackle car he had often driven before. He made sure that the car had plenty of gasoline and oil, that the radiator was full of water, and he took a look at the tires. Then he drove south from Barmouth over the State Road.

It was a fine day, and many cars were out. Ben kept a watchful eye for such a car as that of Joseph Hastings, but none answering the description passed him. So he jogged along until he came to the fork of the Cape Ann Road and turned into it. There were fewer automobiles here, the road was not made for speeding, the little car bounced about a good deal going over ruts, and rattled like a load of tinware.

He met a boy on a bicycle and asked him if he knew a place called the Gables.

“Down the road a couple of miles,” the boy told him. “Big house with a ship for a weather-vane.”

Ben thanked him and drove on. Pretty soon he saw the weather-vane on a roof to the left of the road.

The Gables had a wide lawn, stretching down to a stone wall. The entrance to the drive was at the southern end, and the gateposts were flanked with larches. Ben drove to the gate, and stopped. So far his plan had been simple; now he was undecided what course to follow next.

He was musing over this when a voice hailed him.

“Give you greetings, sir. May I ask what you’re pondering over?”

The words were so peculiar that Ben looked around in surprise. A young man had stepped out from among the trees and was nodding at him.

“Why—good-morning,” said Ben.

“Has your car run out of juice?”

The man came up, a broad smile on his face. He himself looked very much like any sunburned fellow; but his costume was most peculiar. He wore a tight-fitting jacket of green, open at the throat, without any necktie. His knee-breeches were green, too, and so were his stockings, and on his low brown shoes were large brass buckles.

“No,” said Ben, with an answering smile, for there was a twinkle in the stranger’s eye as if he knew some joke, “I’ve gasoline enough to run this car all day. I’ll admit it isn’t the very latest model—not what you’d call a show car—but we do get wonderful mileage per gallon of gas.”

“Don’t make any apologies for your equipage,” said the gentleman in green. “Many a valiant knight has ridden on a steed that wouldn’t have taken the blue ribbon at the horse show. Don Quixote, for example. You remember him, of course? The Spanish cavalier who rode forth to tilt at windmills?”

“Yes,” said Ben with a laugh. And then, seeing that the man was friendly, he added, “That’s a wonderful suit of clothes you’re wearing.”

“You like it?” The owner looked down at his costume. “I designed it myself. It seems to me an improvement on the usual thing. And now, kind sir, since you tell me that your steed has plenty of fodder, may I ask how you happen to be sitting here on such a fine day?”

“This place is called the Gables, isn’t it?” asked Ben. “Mr. Joseph Hastings lives here?”

“Right you are,” answered the man. “But Mr. Hastings isn’t at home this morning. Did you have business with him?”

“In a way. I wanted to find out if he’d lost a silver snuff-box.”

“A snuff-box? That’s interesting. But I don’t think Joseph Hastings takes snuff.”

Ben drew the box from his pocket. The man in green looked at it. “Now where did you find this?” he asked.

“On an island in Barmouth Harbor,” said Ben. “Cotterell’s Island, it’s called.”

“Well!” exclaimed the man. “Well, well—you don’t say so!” He looked at the boy in the car with a new interest. “So that’s where you come from, is it?” He returned the snuff-box. “May I be so inquisitive as to ask your name?”

“Benjamin Sully.”

“Thank you. My own appellation is Roderick Fitzhugh. If you have no objection, Mr. Sully, I should greatly enjoy the pleasure of riding with you.”

Ben didn’t know what to say; and Mr. Fitzhugh evidently took his silence for consent, for he immediately hopped into the seat beside the driver.

“That’s all right,” said Ben; “but you see I wasn’t thinking of riding anywhere. I came to find out whether Mr. Hastings had lost a snuff-box on Cotterell’s Island.”

“Just so. But you can’t find that out, as he’s not at home at present. And meantime I suggest that we go on a little adventure. A fine day, a steed with plenty of gasoline, and two gentlemen looking for amusement.”

Ben was mystified. “What sort of adventure?” he asked.

“Well, what would you say to hunting for hooked-rugs?”

“Hooked-rugs?” Ben laughed; he was now so much amused at Roderick Fitzhugh’s company that he wanted to see more of him. “Do they grow on bushes?”

“No. They grow in these thrifty Yankee cottages. I’ll tell you where to go.”

Ben started the engine and drove on. At his companion’s direction he soon turned into a by-road that led westward.

Roderick Fitzhugh nodded toward a cottage, in the yard of which a woman was scattering grain to a flock of chickens. “There is a likely-looking hunting-ground,” he said. “Please stop when you come to the gate. I will exchange a few words with this respectable lady.”

The car stopped, making its customary noise of clattering tinware as Ben put on the brake. The woman looked round, and in the usual neighborly fashion of farmers walked over to the gate.

“Morning,” she said.

“Good morning to you, Madam,” responded Roderick Fitzhugh. “You have a fine flock of hens.”

“Yes,” she said, looking at the man in the green clothes as if she didn’t know exactly what to make of him.

“My friend and I,” continued Fitzhugh, “were just discussing the subject of hooked-rugs. As soon as I saw you I said, ‘There’s a woman who knows all about them.’” His tone was so deferential that anyone would have been pleased to be addressed in such a manner.

The woman smiled. “Well, now, I don’t know as how I know all about them; but I do have a few old rugs. Been in the family some time.”

“You see!” exclaimed Fitzhugh, turning to Ben. And to the woman he added, “Would it be possible for my friend and me to have a look at them?”

“Surely it would. But they’re not the new shiny kind you can buy at the stores in the city.”

Fitzhugh and Ben descended and followed the woman indoors. Presently they were viewing half-a-dozen antique rugs, all of the hooked variety, that the woman collected from the upstairs rooms.

Ben looked on with interest and amusement while his new friend discussed the rugs with their owner. And after listening to Fitzhugh’s admiration for these things that she evidently regarded as rather faded and only fit for service in bedrooms and attic, the woman said, “I’d be pleased to have you take one, if you care to.”

“Oh, madam, you are too generous,” Fitzhugh answered. “And yet I should like to have one. That medium-sized one, with the purple border. I’d be glad to pay five dollars for it.”

“Why, it’s not worth that much.”

“It is to me,” said Fitzhugh, and he brought out a five-dollar bill from his trouser pocket and laid it on the table.

With the rug they returned to the car. As they drove on again Fitzhugh said, “They used to tell me, when I was a small boy, that you could take one egg from a nest, and if there were several others left the mother bird wouldn’t know the difference. I don’t know whether that’s so. But I’m certain this good woman won’t miss that rug very much. So my conscience is easy, though I got that prize at a bargain. Now, Mr. Benjamin Sully, what do you say? Isn’t hunting for hooked-rugs exciting?”

It was fun to hunt them with this amusing companion. Fitzhugh collected three more at three other houses, paying five dollars for each. At the third house the farmer and his wife and children were just sitting down to dinner and the strangers were invited to join them. They had an excellent meal, during which the man in green did almost all the talking, and when they returned to the car and started on again he rubbed his hands gleefully and said, “Mr. Benjamin Sully, it isn’t so hard to find adventures if you look for them, is it?”

“Well,” Ben answered, “this is all very well; but I set out this morning to see Mr. Hastings and learn if he’d lost a snuff-box.”

“That’s so, you did. Joseph Hastings—a silver snuff-box—found on Cotterell’s Island. What makes you think that the snuff-box you found there belonged to Joseph Hastings?”

Ben considered how much to tell this Roderick Fitzhugh, and finally decided to supply him with more facts. “The snuff-box was bought by Mr. Hastings at a shop in Barmouth, and I found it yesterday in a chest hidden in a crevice in the rocks on the island. Why did he put it there?”

The man in green beamed with delight. “In a treasure chest? Why, that’s splendid!” He looked at Ben with new approval in his eyes. “So you’re mixed up in a real adventure, are you? Treasure hidden in the rocks—on an island! Why, that’s magnificent! No wonder you didn’t get excited over my tame hooked-rugs. Turn the car about, and drive back to the Gables. We must investigate this.”

Half-an-hour later the little car turned in between the gate-posts at the Gables. It clattered up the drive to the front of the house. On the wide porch were at least a dozen people, men and women; and when they saw the occupants of the car they gave a shout of welcome.

“Hello, here’s the lad in green!”

“We thought you’d been kidnapped!”

“Where’d you find the jitney?”

“Hope you’ve had some lunch!”

“We thought you’d been arrested as a suspicious character in those clothes!”

These were some of the exclamations.

The man got out of the car and threw his bundle of rugs on the steps of the porch. “My good friends,” he said, “Roderick Fitzhugh has been adventuring, and there’s his booty. Four beautiful hooked-rugs to add to the collection. And this is Mr. Benjamin Sully. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Sully has found a silver snuff-box belonging to Joseph Hastings in a treasure chest on Cotterel’s Island. What do you think of that?”

There was another chorus of exclamations, expressive of great surprise.

“Mr. Sully,” the man in green continued, “if you’ll get down from your steed we will partake of a long glass of lemonade—two glasses to be exact.”

Ben climbed down and went up the steps. And then he noticed that all the people on the porch were dressed in quaint costumes, as milkmaids or archers or foresters. He looked at Fitzhugh, and the latter nodded. “Queer crowd, aren’t they?” said Fitzhugh. “However, they won’t bite.”

XII—THE ADVENTURE AT THE COVE

That same morning, while Ben had been hunting for the owner of the red automobile with the silver eagle on the radiator cap, Tom and David and John Tuckerman had sailed down to Camp Amoussock in the Argo. They found the boys at the camp in their bathing-suits, practicing for some water-sports that were to be held that week. A raft, with a spring-board, was moored off shore, and from this boys were diving and turning somersaults, backward and forward, like acrobats in a circus.

Other boys were swimming, practising for races, and still others were paddling round in tubs, trying to steer with their feet while they propelled the tubs forward by splashing the water with their hands.

“There,” said John Tuckerman, as he saw a fat youngster revolving round and round in a tub, “that’s the game for me. I believe, with my long arms and legs, that I’d make a hit at it.”

The fat boy splashed too hard, and the tub went over neatly. There was a shout of laughter as the boy bobbed up in the water and tried to turn the slippery tub rightside up again. This was hard work; the tub went round and round, continually evading his fingers; and finally he swam to shore, pushing the tub before him.

“No,” said Tuckerman, “that isn’t the game for me. I used to be pretty good at picking up a pea in a tablespoon, but that was on dry land. When it comes to wrestling with a tub in the water—” He gave an expressive shrug—“I’d rather let the fishes do it.”

The Argo landed, and the three guests were provided with bathing-suits from the camp’s supply. For half-an-hour they swam and dived and perched on the raft, watching the boys in tubs. Then a bugle sounded on shore, telling them it was time to get ready for dinner.

The guests did full justice to dinner, sitting between Mr. Perkins, the Chief Counsellor, and Lanky Larry. Afterwards Mr. Perkins and John Tuckerman had a chat, while Lanky invited Tom and David to take a walk along the shore.

“There’s a queer sort of place a couple of miles to the south,” said Lanky. “It’s a cove with a lot of shanties. Fishermen used to go there; there are boats and nets lying around; but I think it must be deserted. I saw some men there one day last week, but they didn’t look like fishermen.”

“Lead us to it,” said David. “Deserted villages are right in our line.”

The path along the shore brought them to the cove. A little tidal river ran inland, wandering up into marshes. On each side of the river was a stony beach, and a rickety bridge, with a single handrail, connected the banks of the stream. Small weatherbeaten shacks, doors and shutters sagging outward, fishing-dories, rusty anchors, lobster-pots, a few nets with round black buoys, these cluttered up either shore.

“Nice place, if it wasn’t for the shanties,” said David, regarding the cove.

“I found a chap painting here one day,” said Lanky. “He told me it made a great picture; he liked the shanties first-rate.”

“Funny what things painters like,” chuckled David. “The more ramshackle a house is, the more they want to paint it.”

They went down a rocky path to the nearer beach, and sat on the bottom of an upturned scow. As they were chatting they heard the creak of a door, opening on rusty hinges. A man came out from one of the nearer shacks. His clothes were fairly new, he wore a brown slouch hat and tan shoes—evidently he was not a fisherman; neither was he a farmer nor a common loafer; he looked as if he came from a town. He was smoking a small briar pipe.

“What are you doing here?” The man’s tone was a little peremptory, though not exactly surly.

David enjoyed such a question. With a pleasant, friendly smile he answered, “Just sitting here and thinking.”

“That’s all you’re doing, eh?”

“It is at present,” David answered. “What are you doing yourself?”

The man frowned; looked up the creek, looked across at the opposite shore. “Nobody lives here now,” he stated after a minute. “Sometimes I come and fish from that bridge.”

“What’s happened to the place?” asked Lanky.

“I don’t know. Only nobody comes here now.”

“Well, we came this afternoon,” said David. “You see, we’re explorers.”

“You won’t find anything to explore.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

The man shot a glance at David, not a very amiable glance. And with that he walked to the bridge, crossed it, and went into the huddle of shacks on the other bank.

“Pleasant sort of customer,” said Lanky.

“He’d make a cow laugh,” said Tom.

“He didn’t like our being here,” observed David, “Now I wonder why.”

“He wants it all to himself,” said Lanky. “He must be some sort of hermit.”

“And just for that,” said David, “I feel like sitting right here on this scow till he gets more hospitable.”

As a matter of fact, however, sitting on the upturned boat and watching the waves surge gently up over the stony beach and then withdraw in a network of little rivulets that made the stones and pebbles glisten was not entertaining enough to keep the three boys there more than five minutes. Tom got up. “I’m going over the bridge,” he said. “If our friend the hermit doesn’t like it—well, he’ll just have to lump it.”

The bridge shook as the three of them stepped upon it. “For goodness sake, don’t lean against that railing,” Lanky warned. “Stop bouncing up and down as you walk, Dave, or you’ll have us all in the water.”

David went on bouncing; but in spite of that they reached the other shore safely. No one was to be seen here; somewhere in the clutter of shanties the man had disappeared.

“I’d like to know what that precious hermit is up to,” said David, and he walked toward the shacks that were furthest from the bridge.

Lanky and Tom investigated in the other direction, where a clump of oaks came close down to the stream. At the edge of the trees was a shack a little larger and better built than the others. The door was open, and the two boys looked in. “Hello!” exclaimed Tom. “What’s that on the bench? It looks like jewelry.”

A brown cloak, a brown hat with a red feather stuck at one side, and a chain of gold links with a large green stone as a pendant, were piled on the bench.

Tom picked up the ornament. “It’s imitation,” he said. He looked around the room. “Why, there’s a whole wardrobe of queer hats and cloaks and things here!”

“So there is,” said Lanky. “What do you suppose they are? Actors’ things?”

“Actors’ things?” Tom glanced at the outfit of costumes that hung on pegs on one wall. “They’re certainly not fishermen’s things. But what would actors be doing in this cove?”

“I don’t know,” Lanky admitted. “It is funny, isn’t it?”

They looked at the costumes more closely, and then went out of the shack. “I wonder if that man knows something about them,” Lanky suggested. “He might have been keeping guard.”

“Let’s see what Dave’s doing,” said Tom, and started along the bank.

He had only taken a few steps, however, when he stopped. “Here comes a boat around the point. Let’s beat it, and see what they do.”

The two slipped back of a cabin, then to a shelter of bushes. Crouching there, they watched the boat nose its bow into the cove.

The boat was a dory. One man was rowing, two others sat in the stern. They looked no more like the usual type of fishermen than had the man whom the boys had first encountered.

With considerable splashing the boat was rowed up to the bridge. The tide was low, and there was hardly enough water at that point to float the dory. The rower shipped his oars and tied the boat to the railing of the bridge. Meantime the other two men stepped over the side and came up on to the beach.

All three headed toward the shack that the boys had just left and went in at the door.

“They seem to know their way about,” whispered Lanky. “I wonder why Dave’s friend didn’t come down to meet them.”

In a few minutes the three men came out again, and now they had some of the cloaks and hats in their hands. Each put on a cloak and a hat and strutted about; they laughed and joked at each other.

“What in the world——” muttered Lanky. “Actors. I told you,” Tom whispered. “They look like highwaymen.”

The men now seemed satisfied with their costumes. Hats pulled well down on their heads and cloaks thrown over their shoulders, they took the path toward the clump of oaks.

“I say,” muttered Lanky, “what do you suppose they’re going to do? Hold up some farmer’s wagon? Come on, I want to find out what’s their game.”

“I’d better get Dave,” said Tom. “You follow them. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

“All right.”

Lanky went one way, and Tom the other.

Tom ran over the stones between the shanties, and looked in at the open doors; but he did not see David nor the man they had met first. He gave the whistle he used to call David in Barmouth. There was no answer. The shacks on this side of the stream all appeared deserted.

David was not to be found, and Tom supposed he must have gone further along the shore. Meantime he would be losing the chance of finding Lanky, so after whistling several times more Tom turned and ran toward the oaks.

The path along the cove was well marked, it traversed the high ground at the edge of the marshes and turned into fairly thick woods. At a dog-trot Tom soon came up with Lanky. “I couldn’t find Dave,” he grunted. “I guess he found the hermit so fascinating he went for a stroll with him.”

“I’ve kept my eye on the three highwaymen,” said Lanky. “This seems to be the only path around here, marshes on one side and the forest primeval on the other.” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “I ought to be getting back to camp; but I can’t leave an adventure like this. It wouldn’t be decent, would it?”

“It would not,” Tom assented. “If they try to blame you, you refer them to me. I’ll say that we thought those fellows were up to some kind of mischief, and that it seemed to be our duty to investigate them. And that’s telling the truth; they’re what Benjie would call ‘suspicious characters.’”

Every once in a while the boys would catch a glimpse of one or other of the cloaked men through the vista of the trees. Then the boys would stop and let the others get well ahead of them. And presently they reached a dusty road and saw the men tramping along to the south.

Tom and Lanky had to come out in the open then, but, as Lanky pointed out, there was no reason why the men, if they saw them, should think the two boys were at all interested in what they were doing. They walked a half-mile without encountering anyone, and then the boys saw an automobile coming toward the three in front.

“Now,” said Tom, “we’ll see if they’re highwaymen. This is a nice quiet place to hold up a car.”

Peter Cotterell's Treasure