“How can you, Mr. Blent?” asked Mrs. Tingley, feeling some disposition to cross swords with him.

“Never you mind.  I’ll do it.  Goin’ back to-day, of course, Preston; ain’t you?”

“I’m hoping to get this crowd of young folk—­and Mrs. Tingley—­across to the island.  And I think the snow is going to stop soon.”

“I’ll go with you,” declared Blent, promptly.  “Don’t you go till I see you again, Preston.  I gotter ketch ’Squire Keller fust.”

He hurried out of the inn.  Mrs. Tingley and Ruth looked at the foreman questioningly.  The girl cried: 

“Oh! what will he do?”

“He’s going to get a warrant for the boy,” answered Preston, scowling.

“How can he?  What has Jerry done?”

“That don’t make no difference,” said the woodsman.  “Old Rufus just about runs the politics of this town.  Keller will do what he says.  Rufus will get the boy off the island by foul means if he can’t by fair.”

CHAPTER XIII

FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE

Ruth felt her heart swell in anger against Rufus Blent, the Logwood real estate man.  If she had not been determined before to aid Jerry Sheming in every way possible, she was now.

If there was a box of money and papers hidden on Cliff Island, once belonging to Pete Tilton, the old hunter, Ruth desired to keep Blent from finding it.

She believed Jerry’s story—­about the treasure box and all.  Rufus Blent’s actions now seemed to prove the existence of such a box.  He wanted to find it.  But if the money and papers in the box had belonged to old Pete Tilton, surely Jerry, as his single living relative, should have the best right to the “treasure trove.”

How to thwart Blent was the question disturbing Ruth Fielding’s mind.  Of course, nobody but Jerry had as strong a desire as she to outwit the old real estate man.  The other girls and boys—­even Mrs. Tingley—­would not feel as Ruth did about it.  She knew that well enough.

If anything was to be done to save Jerry from being arrested on a false charge and dragged from Cliff Island by Blent, she must bring it about.  Ruth watched the last flakes of the snow falling with a very serious feeling.

The other young folk were delighted with the breaking of the weather.  Now they could observe Logwood better, and its surroundings.  The roughly built “shanty-town” was dropped down on the edge of the lake, in a clearing.  Much of the stumpage around the place was still raw.  The only roads were timber roads and they were now knee-deep in fresh snow.

There was a dock with a good-sized steamer tied up at it, but there was too much ice for it to be got out into the lake.  The railroad came out of the woods on one side and disappeared into just as thick a forest on the other.

The interest of the young people, however, lay in the bit of land that loomed up some five miles away.  Cliff Island contained several hundred acres of forest and meadow—­all now covered with glittering white.