Toby was very silent, but the fact that he spent most of his time looking back at the tow indicated where his thoughts were. Arnold, less affected by the beauty of the speed launch, was eager to get the morning papers and see whether she was advertised.

“How much reward do you suppose we ought to ask, Toby?” he inquired. Toby shook his head.

“A hundred anyway, eh?” continued Arnold. “Maybe there’s a sum offered. I know if I’d lost a boat like that I’d be glad to pay almost anything for her!”

“If she’s stolen property, though,” replied Toby finally, “the owner wouldn’t really have to pay any reward; unless he wanted to, I mean.”

“He will want to, you bet! Where’ll we take her? To your wharf?”

“Yes, I think so. If we leave her at the town landing some one will be messing around her all the time. She can berth where I keep the Turnover. This old tub”—Toby ran a disparaging eye over his launch—“can stay out in the harbor.”

Once ashore, the two boys hurried up the street and bought a copy of every morning paper that the news store had. Then they scuttled back to the boat yard, perched themselves in the lee of a dismantled sloop, and began a systematic search of the various “Lost and Found” columns. As each paper was laid aside without results Toby heaved a sigh of relief and Arnold one of disappointment. When the last paper had been perused Arnold observed his chum blankly.

“Not in any of those,” he said, regretfully. “Gee, that’s mean, isn’t it?”

Toby nodded silently. After a moment he said, “I suppose you—you wouldn’t want to keep her if—if we didn’t find an owner, Arn?”

“Why, no, I don’t think so. Would you? She wouldn’t do for rough weather, you know. Mr. Trainor said so. I’d be scared to death to go out of the harbor in her. If we don’t find her owner it would be great to sell her to Mr. Trainor, I think.”

Toby nodded again, but with no enthusiasm. “I suppose it would be silly for us to keep her,” he said, “only—only she’s the most beautiful launch I ever saw, Arn.”

“Yes, she’s a beauty, all right, but what would we do with her? She’d cost money, too.” After a moment’s silence he said: “Look here, Toby, maybe she was stolen a long while ago and they’ve stopped advertising for her. Maybe if we looked through some old papers we’d come across something.”

“Where would we find the old papers, though?”

“A library would have them. Is there a library here?”

“No, but there’s one in Johnstown. What we ought to do, I guess, is put an advertisement in ourselves, Arn.”

“That’s so! I never thought of that! Let’s go and write one.”

“All right.” Toby gathered the discarded papers and arose. “You do it, though. I—I haven’t got any heart for it!”

But that advertisement was never written, for on the way past the shed Toby thought of his father, and Mr. Tucker was invited to view the prize.

“That’s a nice little boat, Tobe,” said Mr. Tucker, as he looked down on her from the wharf. “Made for quiet waters. Who built her?”

“I don’t know, sir,” answered Toby.

“That means you didn’t look,” replied his father, descending the ladder and jumping into the launch. “There’ll be a maker’s plate on her somewhere, unless it’s been ripped off.” He went forward and peered amongst the instruments there, and presently gave a grunt of satisfaction. “Here it is. ‘Built by Wells-Stotesbury Company, Moorcett, Conn.’ Now, what’s her name, Tobe? Oh, they painted that out, did they? Run up to the paint closet and get that can of paint-remover and a handful of waste.”

A few minutes later the gray paint began to dissolve from a patch on the slanting stern and her name appeared letter by letter, faint, but legible. “Ollow M” read Toby. “That’s a queer name.”

“You wait a bit,” advised Mr. Tucker, and extended his operations with the evil-smelling concoction in the can. “There it is,” he said at last. “Follow Me. Now, all you’ve got to do is write to the builders and ask who she belongs to. Where was your gumption, Tobe?”

Toby shook his head sadly, but whether the sadness was caused by an appreciation of his lamentable lack of gumption or by something else didn’t appear. At the boys’ request Mr. Tucker indited a letter at the littered desk in one corner of the boat shed and they bore it to the postoffice. Toby watched it disappear through the letter slot with emotions of despair! He spent all the rest of the day, to Arnold’s disgust, in shining the brass on the Follow Me and cleaning her up, and Arnold, after toiling with him until noon, went off in something very like a huff and didn’t come back that day. Probably Toby missed him, but he didn’t seem unhappy. He rubbed and scrubbed until supper time, whistling a tune all the while, and when Phebe, sent to fetch him, exclaimed admiringly as she viewed the glistening brass and immaculate varnish, Toby was fully rewarded. After supper Phebe helped him stretch a tarpaulin over the Follow Me and sympathetically listened to Toby’s enraptured comments on her and agreed with them all.

“Perhaps,” she said, hopefully, as they made their way across the boat yard in the twilight, “some day you’ll have one just like her.”

But Toby sighed and shook his head. “Probably when that time came I wouldn’t want it so much,” he said.

“Oh, I meant real soon,” said Phebe cheerfully.

“If I had enough money to buy me a launch like that soon, I wouldn’t buy it,” replied her brother. “I’d rather go to boarding school.”

Mr. Tucker had assured them they couldn’t count on hearing from the launch builders until the second day after they had written, and so Arnold took up the task of forming the Spanish Head Baseball Club where he had left off and was able the next morning to inform Toby that the “Spaniards” were ready for the fray. But Toby hadn’t made any such progress and reported that he was still shy two players, even if he provided no substitutes. Arnold was severe with him.

“You haven’t been trying,” he charged. “You’ve been monkeying around that silly launch. You needn’t say you haven’t, for I know you have. He has, hasn’t he, Phebe? Besides, look at your hands all grimed with paint or something.”

Toby obediently observed his hands, and made a grimace. “They’re as sore as anything. I got some of that paint-remover stuff on them, and dad says I oughtn’t to have. He says maybe the skin will all be gone by tomorrow!”

“That’s lye,” said Arnold.

“What?” Toby stared. “You’d better not let dad hear you say so!”

“Say what?” asked Arnold, in puzzlement, while Phebe laughed and Mr. Murphy chimed in with his absurd chuckle and then hung by his beak from the end of the perch.

“Say what he said was a lie,” answered Toby.

“I didn’t!”

“What did you say, then? Didn’t you say——?”

“He said the paint-remover was lye,” gurgled Phebe. “L-y-e, lye; and so it is, and it’s no wonder your hands are sore. I should think they would be.”

“Ought to be, too,” grumbled Arnold. “Messing around that boat all day long! When are you going to get that nine together, I’d like to know?”

Toby looked penitent, and then, having attempted to put his hands in his pockets with painful results, annoyed. “I’ll find the rest of the fellows today,” he answered. “There’s lots of time.” Then he recovered his good humor and smiled. “Besides, we can beat you fellows with six men any day!”

Arnold jeered. “Yes, you can! We’ll make you Towners look like a lot of pikers when we get at you! You’d better come and see that game, Phebe. It’s going to be some slaughter!”

“Yes, we’re going to treat you the way Admiral Dewey treated those other Spaniards,” laughed Toby. “You may fire when ready, Gridley!”

“I’m not worrying. Aren’t you fellows going to practice any before you play us?”

“Oh, we might get together Tuesday. We don’t want to be too good, you know.”

“Don’t be silly, Toby,” advised his sister. “You ought to get the boys together and practice a lot. You know very well that you won’t be able to play a bit well if you don’t. Why, Arnold says they’re going to practice every day.”

“Of course, they’ll need to,” answered Toby calmly. “Anyway, we can’t practice until we get a team, and we’ve only got six so far. How’d you like to play with us, Phebe?”

“Love to!” laughed Phebe. “But I’m afraid I’d get sort of dirty sliding to bases.”

“Who’ll we get to umpire?” asked Arnold.

“Mr. Murphy,” suggested Toby. “He’s quite impartial, aren’t you, you old rascal?”

The parrot blinked thoughtfully and sidled along his perch. Then he shrieked. “All hands, stand by!” at the top of his raucous voice and chuckled wickedly when Phebe put her hands to her ears.

“There’s Mr. Gould,” said Toby. “He umpired for us this spring. Only I don’t know if he could leave his store on a Wednesday.”

“I was thinking that maybe Mr. Trainor would do it for us,” said Arnold. “I mean the youngest one.”

“Brother Jim?” Toby nodded. “He’d be all right. We might ask him. I guess he could do it, eh?”

“Yes. I asked Frank about him and the others, you know, and Frank said Mr. Trainor, the one that’s married to Mrs. Trainor, is a great swell. He’s crazy for me to take him over there and introduce him. He says the brother goes to Yale and played on the varsity nine this spring. They come from Philadelphia.”

“I wouldn’t hold that against him,” replied Toby gravely, “if he did a good job and gave the Towners all the close decisions. Let’s go over and ask him now.”

Arnold agreed on the condition that Toby was to come right back to town and look up the rest of the members for his team, and so they all three chugged around to the houseboat in the Frolic, were warmly welcomed and obtained Brother Jim’s consent to act as umpire. “I’ve never tried it,” he said, “but I’ll do my best for you. I warn you right now, though, that if I’m struck with anything heavier than a bat I’ll throw up the job!”

Toby told of the discovery of the name and makers of the stolen launch and Mr. Trainor sighed sympathetically. “I guess you’ll have to give her up, Tucker. Unless—I say, here’s an idea! How would it do if I went over to your wharf some dark night and took her away? We’d go halves on her and—but, there, I forgot. Deering’s part owner, isn’t he? We might buy him off, though; pay him hush money. Think it over, Tucker!”

Mrs. Trainor took greatly to Phebe and showed her through the houseboat while the others were talking on deck. Then they embarked again and went back to town, and Toby set off, with no great gusto, to complete the roster of his nine, Arnold consenting to remain for dinner.

Toby returned warm but triumphant at a little after twelve and announced that he had filled the vacant positions. “I’ve got ten fellows altogether,” he said, “and it’s going to be mighty hard to decide which is the tenth! I guess we’ll have to draw lots to see which one of us is the substitute. We’re going to practice tomorrow, if enough fellows can get off. I guess that’s where you’ll have the best of us, Arn. You can practice any time you like.”

“Well, you said you didn’t need to practice.”

“Maybe an hour or so wouldn’t hurt. There wasn’t any letter from those folks, was there, Phebe?”

“No. You know father said it couldn’t come before tomorrow, Toby. Arnold and I have talked it all over. You’re to stand out for two hundred dollars reward, Toby, and Arnold’s going to put his share into a sailboat, and he’s going to have father build it for him!”

“And then I’m going to get you to show me how to sail her,” added Arnold.

“Get Phebe,” was the reply. “She can sail a boat as well as I can. I guess, though, the fellow who lost that launch isn’t going to pay any two hundred dollars to us.”

“You can’t tell,” said Phebe. “She’s worth lots more than that. Father said he wouldn’t build her hull for less than four hundred dollars, and that the engine——”

“What would you do with your share if we did get that much?” asked Arnold.

Toby shook his head. “I’d—I don’t know,” he acknowledged. “But I guess I could find a use for it!”

The next morning Toby dashed out of the house at a little after eight, pulling his hat on as he ran, and hurried to the nearest telephone. Over at the Head, Arnold listened to a confused message and then, slamming the receiver on the hook, bolted down to the landing and took a flying leap into the Frolic.