“What are you and your father doing here?”

“That is my business,” broke in Arnold Baxter.

“I don’t see why you fellows can’t turn over a new leaf,” went on Dick earnestly.

“Oh, don’t preach, Dick Rover,” answered Dan Baxter.  “You make me sick when you do that.”

“I suppose you find this a good hiding place.”

“It has been—­up to now,” said Arnold Baxter.  “But since you have discovered us—­” he did not finish.

“We’ll make him pay for it,” said Dan Baxter.  “I’ve been waiting to square accounts for a long time.”

“How did you escape from that island, Dan?” asked Dick curiously.

“A ship came along about a week after you left it.”

“I see.  And did you come right through to here?”

“That is my business, Dick Rover.  But I came to help my father, I don’t mind telling you that.”

“Then you knew he had escaped from prison?”

“From the hospital, yes.”

“And did you know he had robbed our house?”

“He took what belonged to him, Dick Rover.  Your folks robbed him of that mine in the West.”

“Well, I won’t argue the point, Dan Baxter.”  Dick got up and moved toward the door.  “I think I’ll go.”

“Will you!” cried both of the Baxters, in a breath, and seizing him they forced him back into the corner.

“Let us make him a prisoner,” went on Dan Baxter, and this was speedily done by aid of a rope which the elder Baxter brought forth.  Then Dick was thrown into a closet of an inner apartment and the door was locked upon him.

CHAPTER XXIX

TRUE HEROISM

“Well, one thing is certain, I am much worse off now than I was when in the hands of Lew Flapp’s crowd,” thought Dick dismally, after trying in vain to break the bonds that bound him.

The closet in which he was a prisoner was so small that he could scarcely turn himself.  The door was a thick one, so to break it down was out of the question.

“Stop your row in there!” called out Dan Baxter presently.  “If you don’t, I’ll give you something you won’t want.”

“How long are you going to keep me here?”

“If you wait long enough you’ll find out,” was the unsatisfactory answer.

“It won’t do you any good to keep me a prisoner, Dan.”

“Won’t it?  Perhaps you think I’m going to let you go so that you can get the officers to arrest my father,” sneered the younger Baxter.

“They are bound to get him anyway, sooner or later.”

“They’ll never get him if they don’t catch him this week.”

“Why?  Is he going to leave the country?”

“That’s his business, not yours,” said Dan Baxter, and walked away.

“It’s too bad he turned up as he did,” remarked Arnold Baxter, when he found himself alone with his son.  “I thought I’d be safe here until I could slip over to Boston.”