“The captain hauled me aboard, questioned me, looked as though he more than half doubted my yarn, and then put me to bed in the cabin of the sloop.  He attended to me as best he could.  When we reached Hetherton, about noon, a doctor patched me up.  I had something to eat, bought this new hat, and hired a driver to take me ten miles to the railway.  Then I came over here as soon as I could, and—–­pardon me, but I’m feeling weak.  I’ll sit down right here.”

Harry sat down heavily on the wall.

“Why didn’t you wire me?” asked Tom.

“Why, you didn’t doubt but that I’d turn up as surely as any other bad egg, did you?” questioned Harry, looking up.

“Chum, I wouldn’t admit it, even to myself, but I feared you were dead.  But we mustn’t waste time talking.  Describe that black man to me, and—–­”

“And the company will hire detectives to start right on the trail of that negro,” interjected Mr. Prenter.

“If—–­if the expense is really warranted,” ended Mr. Bascomb, cautiously.

“Warranted?” retorted the treasurer of the Melliston Company.  “Why, it is absolutely necessary to protect our work here!  That big negro is the key to the mystery.  We must catch him if it costs us a thousand dollars.”

“Oh, well,” assented President Bascomb, reluctantly.

“I—–­I guess I’m all right to start in to work now,” Harry suggested, trying to rise.

“Sit down—–­you’re not!” replied Tom and Treasurer Prenter, in the same breath, as both pressed Harry back to the wall.

“We don’t need work so much to-day,” Mr. Prenter continued.  “What we want to do is to solve this mystery.  You stay here, Hazelton.  I’ll go back alone and find a ’bus or a carriage.  Then we’ll go back to camp and hold a council of war.  Something must be done, and we’ll decide how it’s to be done.”

Mr. Prenter, though no longer a young man, proved that he carried both speed and agility in his feet.  While he was gone Tom endeavored to get a few more particulars from Harry, but Hazelton simply didn’t know anything that threw any more light on the dread mystery of the breakwater.

“Then a million-dollar undertaking like this is to be constantly imperiled, just because of a senseless moral crusade that you two young men are trying to put through in the camp,” declared Mr. Bascomb moodily.

Tom covertly signaled his chum to pay no heed to this remark.

Within a quarter of an hour Treasurer Prenter returned in a stage drawn by two sorry looking horses.

“This will carry us up to the house, if the affair doesn’t break down,” Mr. Prenter called cheerily.  “Come along, folks.”

Soon afterwards the four were back on the porch.  Nicolas came gliding out to see what he could do for their comfort.

“Just circulate around and make sure that no one gets close enough to hear what we’re talking about,” Mr. Prenter directed.  He had already ordered the driver of the stage to withdraw a few rods and await orders.