“Mother, Mr. Preston is here.  Says he’d like to see you.”

Mr. Preston was the foreman to whom Jerry Sheming had been sent for a job.  Ruth, who overheard, remembered the man’s name.  Then she saw a man dressed in Canadian knit cap, tall boots, and mackinaw, and carrying a huge umbrella, with which he hurried forward to hold protectingly over Mrs. Tingley’s head.

“Glad to see you, ma’am,” said the foreman.  Ruth was passing them on her way to the hotel when she heard something that stayed her progress.  “Sorry to trouble you.  Mr. Tingley ain’t coming up to-day?”

“Not until Christmas morning,” replied the lady.  “He cannot get away before.”

“Well, I’ll have to discharge that Jerry Sheming.  Too bad, too.  He’s a worker, and well able to guide the boys and girls around the island—­knows it like a book.”

“Why let him go, then?” asked the lady.

“Blent says he’s dishonest.  An’ I seen him snooping around rather funny, myself.  Guess I’ll have to fire him, Mis’ Tingley.”

CHAPTER XII

RUFUS BLENT’S LITTLE WAYS

The crowd waded through the soft snow to the inn.  It was a small place, patronized mainly by fishermen and hunters in the season.  It was plain, from the breakfast they served to the Tingley party, that if the unexpected guests had to remain long, they would be starved to death.

“And all the ‘big eats’ over on the Island,” wailed Heavy.  “I could swim there, I believe.”

“I am afraid I could not allow you to do that,” said Mrs. Tingley, shaking her head.  “It would be too absurd.  We’d better take the train home again.”

“Never!” chorused Belle and her brothers.  “We must get to Cliff Island in some way—­by hook or by crook,” added the girl, who had set her heart upon this outing.

Ruth was rather serious this morning.  She waited for a chance to speak with Mrs. Tingley alone, and when it came, she blurted out what she wished to say: 

“Oh, Mrs. Tingley!  I couldn’t help hearing what that man said to you.  Must he discharge Jerry because Rufus Blent says so?”

“Why, my dear!  Oh!  I remember.  You were the girl who befriended the boy in the first place?”

“Yes, I did, Mrs. Tingley.  And I hope you won’t let your foreman turn him off for nothing——­”

“Oh!  I can’t interfere.  It is my husband’s business, of course.”

“But let me tell you!” urged Ruth, and then she related all she knew about Jerry Sheming, and all about the story of the old hunter who had lived so many years on Cliff Island.

“Mr. Tingley had a good deal of trouble over that squatter,” said Belle’s mother, slowly.  “He was crazy.”

“That might be.  But Jerry isn’t crazy.”

“But they made some claim to owning a part of the island.”

“And after the old man had lived there for fifty years, perhaps he thought he had a right to it.”