“You’re a villain!” declared the city man.

“Lemme tell you something, Mr. Tingley.  There’s a law to punish callin’ folks out o’ their names!  I know the law, an’ don’t you forgit it.  Come here, you, Jerry Sheming!  Git in this sleigh.  And you, too, Lem.  You other fellers can come back to Logwood and I’ll pay ye as I agreed.”

Ruth had, meanwhile, met Jerry when he came ashore.  She seized his hand and, almost in tears, told him how sorry she was he was captured.

“Don’t you mind, Miss Ruth.  He’s bound to git me out of the way if he can,” whispered Jerry.  “Rufe Blent is all the law there is in Logwood, I guess.”

“But Mr. Tingley will help you.”

“Maybe.  But if Blent can’t prove this hatched up business against me, he’ll keep right on persecuting me, if I don’t light out.  An’ I believe I found something, Miss Ruth.”

“Your uncle’s money?”

“I wouldn’t say that.  But I was goin’ to break into another little cave if I’d got hold of that mattock.  The mouth is under the debris that fell with the landslide.  It was about where Uncle Pete said he hid his treasure box.  Poor Uncle Pete!  Losin’ that box was what sent him off his head complete, like.”

This had been said too low for the others to hear.  But now Daggett came forward and clamped his big paw on Jerry’s shoulder.

“Come along, you!” commanded the constable, jerking his prisoner toward the sledge.

“Oh, isn’t it a mean, mean shame?” cried Helen Cameron.

“Wish that old Blent was my size,” grumbled Busy Izzy, clenching his fists and glaring at the real estate man.

“I wish I could do something at the present moment to help you, Sheming,” said Mr. Tingley, his expression very angry.  “But don’t be afraid.  You have friends.  I shall come right over to Keller’s court, and I shall hire a lawyer to defend you.”

“You kin do all ye like,” sneered Blent, as the sledge started with the prisoner.  “But I’ll beat ye.  And ye’ll pay for tryin’ to balk me, too.”

“Don’t you be too loose with your threats, Rufe,” sang out Preston, the foreman.  “If anything happens over here on the island—­any of Mr. Tingley’s property is destroyed—­we’ll know who to look to for damages.”

“Yah!” snarled Blent, and drove away.

The fact remained, however, that, for the time being at least, Rufus Blent was master of the situation.

CHAPTER XX

THE FISHING PARTY

Ruth felt so unhappy she wept openly.  It seemed too bad that Jerry Sheming should be taken away to the mainland a prisoner.

“They’ll find some way of driving him out of this country again,” remarked Preston, the foreman.  “You don’t know Blent, Mr. Tingley, as well as the rest of us do.  Other city men have come up here and bucked against him in times past—­and they were sorry before they got through.”