“Maybe I did.”  I said, “but what’s the big idea, kind sir?”

“Well, then,” he said, “I came up here to get your two bucks for you, didn’t I?  And you remember I told you there was a breeze blowing?  Now what did I do—­in the dark?”

“Search me,” I said.

“Why, you big galook, I felt around in the dark and lifted the oar-lock off the bill and then felt there for it, but the breeze was too quick for me.  It blew the page over and I slapped my hand down on—­what?”

“Another page,” I said; “good night!”

“Good-bye two dollar bill,” he said, “it was between those two other pages.  That’s why there was a stain on the right page in the book.  There was a stain on the bill made by the oar-lock and when the page and the bill blew over, the fresh oil on the bill kind of stamped itself on the left hand page.  You didn’t damage the book.  You only damaged the bill.  It was the breeze that damaged the book—­see?”

“Believe me!  I’ll be responsible,” I told him.

“That breeze was a thief,” he said.

“It’ll come to grief some day,” I told him.  Then we both began to laugh.

“And it’s lucky I got that book out of the library,” he said.  “There was your two bucks tucked away all nice and neat between the pages.  It was just where Jim Hawkins was starting awake on the ship.”

“Narrow escape,” I said, “hey?  If you hadn’t taken the book out just when you did, good night, the ship might have started and good-bye to my two dollars.”

“You crazy Indian,” he said.

“And all the time I was saying Jim Hawking was honest and a good friend and all that, and all the time he had my two bucks.”

“Believe me I wouldn’t trust that fellow with a postage stamp,” Westy said.

Laugh!  Oh, boy, I thought I’d die laughing—­and Westy, too.

CHAPTER XXVIII

JOLLYING PEE-WEE

That’s the reason I’ll never trust a gentle breeze.  In books you find all kinds of nice things about gentle breezes, but look out for them, that’s what I say.  Whenever I leave my bathing suit on the grass to dry, I lay a good big rock on it, you can bet.  I’d trust Skinny with a hundred dollars, I would, and Westy too, but gentle breezes—­Nix.  They’re so plaguy sly and sneaky like.

Westy and I went and bought a dandy copy of Treasure Island for the library.  It cost us a quarter more than my two dollars, but we should worry.

Now I have to tell you one other thing that happened before we got started on our cruise, especially because it has a lot to do with our cruise.

The next morning we all went back to Northside Woods to tie up the saplings and drag them over to the river.  Then we were going to use a rowboat and tow them down and maybe float some of them down.  I told you about our old launch, but it’s too shallow to use a launch up as far as Northside Woods.