"What I don't understand," said Tom, in his dull way, "is how if that fellow was drowned or killed that night, he managed to get back to this boat again—that's what gets me."

"What?" said Roy.

"What are you talking about?" chimed in Pee-wee.

They were sitting in the little cabin of the Good Turn eating rice cakes, about an hour after the launching. The boat rocked gently at its moorings, the stars glittered in the wide expanse of water, the tiny lights in the neighboring village kept them cheery company as they chatted there in the lonesome night with the hills frowning down upon them. It was very quiet and this, no less than the joyous sense of possession of this cosy home, kept them up, notwithstanding their strenuous two days of labor.

"Just what I said," said Tom. "See that board you fixed the oil stove on? I believe that was part of that skiff. You can see the letters N-Y-M-P-H even under the paint. That strip was in the boat all the time. How did it get here? That's what I'd like to know."

Roy laid down his "flopper" and examined the board carefully, the excited Pee-wee joining him. It was evidently the upper strip of the side planking from a rowboat and at one end, under the diluted paint which they had here used, could be dimly traced the former name of the launch.

"What-do-you-know-about-that?" ejaculated Roy.

"It's a regular mystery," said Pee-wee; "that's one thing I like, a mystery."

"If that's a part of this boat's skiff," said Tom, "then it proves two things. It proves that the boat was damaged—no fellow could pull a plank from it like that; and it proves that that fellow came back to the launch. It proves that he was injured, too. That man said he could swim. Then why should he bring this board back with him unless it was to help him keep afloat?"

"He wouldn't need to drag it aboard," said Roy.

"Now you spoil it all," put in Pee-wee.

"I don't know anything about that," said Tom, "but that board didn't drift back and climb in by itself. It must have been here all the time. I suppose the other fellow—the one they found drowned—might have got it here, some way," he added.

"Not likely," said Roy. "If he'd managed to get back to the launch with the board, he wouldn't have jumped overboard again just to get drowned. He'd have managed to stay aboard."

There was silence for a few minutes while Roy drummed on the plank with his fingers and Pee-wee could hardly repress his excitement at the thought that they were on the track of a real adventure. Tom Slade had "gone and done it again." He was always surprising them by his stolid announcement of some discovery which opened up delectable possibilities. And smile as he would (especially in view of Pee-wee's exuberance), Roy could not but see that here was something of very grave significance.

"That's what I meant," drawled Tom, "when I told her that we could try—to find her brother."

This was a knockout blow.

"This trip of ours is going to be just like a book," prophesied Pee-wee, excitedly; "there's a—there's a—long lost brother, and—and—a deep mystery!"

"Sure," said Roy. "We'll have to change our names; I'll be Roy Rescue, you be Pee-wee Pinkerton, the boy sleuth, and Tom'll be Tom Trustful. What d'you say, Tom?"

Tom made no answer and for all Roy's joking, he was deeply interested. Like most important clues, the discovery was but a little thing, yet it could not be accounted for except on the theory that Harry Stanton had somehow gotten back to the launch after the accident, whatever the accident was. It meant just that—nothing less and nothing more; though, indeed, it did mean more to Pee-wee and as he slept that night, in the gently rocking boat, he dreamed that he had vowed a solemn vow to Mr. Stanton's daughter to "find her brother or perish in the attempt." He carried a brace of pistols, and sailing forth with his trusty chums, he landed in the island of Madagascar, to which Harry Stanton had been carried, bound hand and foot, in an aeroplane. The three, undaunted, then built a Zeppelin and sailed up to the summit of a dizzy crag where they rescued the kidnapped youth and on reaching home, Mr. Stanton gave them a sea-going yacht and a million dollars each for pocket money. When he awoke from this thrilling experience he found that the Good Turn was chugging leisurely up the river in the broad daylight.

The boat behaved very well, indeed. She leaked a little from the strain of launching, but the engine pumped the water out faster than it came in. All day long they lolled in the cockpit or on the cabin roof, taking turns at the steering. Roy, who best understood gas engines, attended to the motor, but it needed very little attention except that it missed on high speed, so he humored it and they ambled along at "sumpty-sump miles an hour," as Roy said, "but what care we," he added, "as long as she goes." They anchored for several hours in the middle of the day and fished, and had a mess of fresh perch for luncheon.

Naturally, the topic of chief interest was the possibility that Harry Stanton was living, but the clue which appeared to indicate that much suggested nothing further, and the question of why he did not return home, if he were indeed alive was a puzzling one.

"His sister said he had been to Costa Rica, and was fond of traveling," suggested Tom. "Maybe his parents objected to his going away from home so he went this way—as long as the chance came to him—and let them think he was drowned."

Roy, sitting on the cabin roof with his knees drawn up, shook his head. "Or maybe he left the boat again and tried to swim to shore to go home, and didn't make it," he added.

"That's possible," said Tom, "but then they'd probably have found his body."

"We aren't sure he's alive," Roy said thoughtfully, "but it means a whole lot not to be sure that he's dead."

"Maybe he was made away with by someone who wanted the boat," said Pee-wee. "Maybe a convict from the prison killed him—you never can tell. Jiminys, it's a mystery, sure."

"You bet it is," said Roy. "The plot grows thicker. If Sir Guy Weatherby were only here, or Detective Darewell—or some of those story-book ginks they——"

"They probably wouldn't have noticed the plank from the skiff," suggested Pee-wee.

Roy laughed and then fell to thinking. "Gee, it would be great if we could find him!" he said.

And there the puzzling matter ended, for the time being; but the Good Turn took on a new interest because of the mystery with which it was associated and Pee-wee was continually edifying his companions with startling and often grewsome theories as to the fate or present whereabouts of Harry Stanton, until—until that thing happened which turned all their thoughts from this puzzle and proved that bad turns as well as good ones have the boomerang quality of returning upon their author.

It was the third afternoon of their cruise, or their "flop" as Roy called it, for they had flopped along rather than cruised, and the Good Turn's course would have indicated, as he remarked, a fit of the blind staggers. They had paused to fish and to bathe; they had thrown together a makeshift aquaplane from the pieces of an old float which they had found, and had ridden gayly upon it; and their course had been so leisurely and rambling that they had not yet reached Poughkeepsie, when all of a sudden the engine stopped.

Roy went through the usual course of procedure to start it up, but without result. There was not a kick left in it. Silently he unscrewed the cap on the deck, pushed a stick into the tank and lifted it out—dry.

"Boys," said he, solemnly, "there is not a drop of gasoline in the tank. The engine must have used it all up. Probably it has been using it all the time——"

"You make me sick," said Pee-wee.

"I have known engines to do that before."

"Didn't I tell you to get gasoline in Newburgh?" demanded Pee-wee.

"You did, Sir Walter, and would that we had taken your advice; but I trusted the engine and it has evidently been using the gasoline while our backs were turned. We should worry! You don't suppose it would run on witch hazel, do you?"

"Didn't I tell——" began Pee-wee.

"If we could only reduce friend Walter to a liquid," said Roy. "I think we could get started all right—he's so explosive."

"Bright boy," said Tom.

"Oh, I'm a regular feller, I am," said Roy. "I knew that engine would stop when there wasn't any more gasoline—I just felt it in my bones. But what care we!

'Oh, we are merry mountaineers,
And have no carking cares or fears—
Or gasoline.'

Get out the oars, scouts!"

So they got out the oars and with the aid of these and a paddle succeeded in making the shore where they tied up to the dilapidated remnants of what had once been a float.

"There must be a village in the neighborhood," said Tom, "or there wouldn't be a float here."

"Sherlock Holmes Slade is at it again," said Roy. It would have been a pretty serious accident that Roy wouldn't have taken gayly. "Pee-wee, you're appointed a committee to look after the boat while Tomasso and I go in search of adventure—and gasoline. There must be a road up there somewhere and if there's a road I dare say we can find a garage—maybe even a village. Get things ready for supper, Pee-wee, and when we get back I'll make a Silver Fox omelet for good luck."

The spot where they had made a landing was at the foot of precipitous hills between which and the shore ran the railroad tracks. Tom and Roy, carrying a couple of gasoline cans, started along a road which led around the lower reaches of one of these hills. As Pee-wee stood upon the cabin watching them, the swinging cans were brightened by the rays of the declining sun, and there was a chill in the air as the familiar grayness fell upon the heights, bringing to the boy that sense of loneliness which he had felt before.

He was of the merriest temperament, was Pee-wee, and, as he had often said, not averse to "being jollied." But he was withal very sensitive and during the trip he had more than once fancied that Tom and Roy had fallen together to his own exclusion, and it awakened in him now and then a feeling that he was the odd number of the party. He had tried to ingratiate himself with them, though to be sure no particular effort was needed to do that, yet sometimes he saw, or fancied he saw, little things which made him feel that in important matters he was left out of account. Roy would slap him on the shoulder and tousle his hair, but he would ask Tom's advice—and take it. Perhaps Roy had allowed his propensity for banter and jollying to run too far in his treatment of Pee-wee. At all events, the younger boy had found himself a bit chagrined at times that their discussions had not been wholly three-handed. And now, as he watched the others hiking off through the twilight, and heard their laughter, he recalled that it was usually he who was appointed a "committee to stay and watch the boat."

This is not a pleasant train of thought when you are standing alone in the bleakness and sadness and growing chill of the dying day, with tremendous nature piled all about you, and watching your two companions as they disappear along a lonely road. But the mood was upon him and it did not cheer him when Roy, turning and making a megaphone of his hands, called, "Look out and don't fall into the gas tank, Pee-wee!"

He had reminded them that they had better buy gasoline at Newburgh, while they had the chance. Roy had answered jokingly telling Pee-wee that he had better buy a soda in the city while he had the chance, and Tom had added, "I guess the kid thinks we want to drink it."

Well, there they were hiking it up over the hills now in quest of gasoline and still joking him.

If Pee-wee had remembered Roy's generous pleasure in the "parrot stunt," he would have been much happier, but instead he allowed his imagination to picture Tom and Roy in the neighboring village, having a couple of sodas—perhaps taking a flyer at a movie show.

He did as much as he could toward getting supper, and when it grew dark and still they did not return, he clambered up on the cabin roof again and sat there gazing off into the night. But still they did not come.

"Gee, I'm a Silver Fox, anyway," he said; "you'd think he'd want one of his own patrol with him sometimes—gee!"

He rose and went down into the cabin where the dollar watch which hung on a nail told him that it was eight o'clock. Then it occurred to him that it would serve them right if he got his own supper and was in his bunk and asleep when they returned. It would be a sort of revenge on them. He would show them, at least, that he could get along very well by himself, and by way of doing so he would make some rice cakes. Roy was not the only one who could make rice cakes. He, Pee-wee, could make them if nobody stood by guying him.

He had never wielded the flopper; that had been Roy's province; but he could, all right, he told himself. So he dug into Roy's duffel bag for the recipe book which was famous in the troop; which told the secrets of the hunter's stew; which revealed the mystery of plum-duff and raisin pop-overs in all their luscious details and which set you on the right path for the renowned rice cakes.

Between the leaves, right where the rice cake recipe revealed itself to the hungry inquirer, was a folded paper which dropped out as Pee-wee opened the book. For all he knew it contained the recipe so he held it under the lantern and read:

"Dear Mary:

"Since you butted in, Tom and I have decided that it would be better for Pee-wee to go with him, and I'll stay home. Anyway, that's what I've decided. So you'll get your wish all right and I should worry.

"Roy."

Pee-wee read it twice over, then he laid it on the locker and sat down and looked at it. Then he picked it up and read it over again. He did not even realize that its discovery among Roy's things would indicate that it had never been sent. Sent or not, it had been written.

So this was the explanation of Roy's invitation that he accompany them on the trip. Mary Temple had asked them to let him go. Yet, despite his present mood, he could not believe that his own patrol leader, Roy Blakeley, could have written this.

"I bet Tom Slade is—I bet he's the cause of it," he said.

He recalled now how he had talked about the trip to Mary Temple and how she had spoken rather mysteriously about the possibility of his going along. So it was she who was his good friend; it was to her he owed the invitation which had come to him with such a fine air of sincerity.

"I always—crinkums, anyway girls always seem to like me, that's one thing," he said. "And—and Roy did, too, before Tom Slade came into the troop."

It was odd how he turned against Tom, making him the scapegoat for Roy's apparent selfishness and hypocrisy.

"They just brought me along for charity, like," he said, "'cause she told them to. Cracky, anyway, I didn't try to make her do that—I didn't."

This revelation in black and white of Roy's real feeling overcame him and as he put the letter back in the book and the book back in the duffel bag, he could scarcely keep his hand from trembling.

"Anyway, I knew it all the time," he said. "I could see it."

He had no appetite for rice cakes now. He took some cakes of chocolate and a couple of hard biscuits and stuffed them in his pocket. Then he went out into the cockpit and listened. There was no sound of voices or footfalls, nothing but the myriad voices of nature, or frogs croaking nearby, of a cheery cricket somewhere on shore, of the water lapping against the broken old wharf as the wind drove it in shoreward.

He returned to the cabin, tore a leaf from his scout notebook and wrote, but he had to blink his eyes to keep back the tears.

"Dear Roy:
"I think you'll have more fun if you two go the rest of the way alone. I always said two's a company, three's a crowd. You've heard me say it and I ought to have had sense enough to remember it. But anyway, I'm not mad and I like you just as much. I'll see you at camp.

"WALTER HARRIS."

"P. S.—If I had to vote again for patrol leader I'd vote for you."

He was particular not to mention Tom by name and to address his note to Roy. He laid it in the frying pan on the stove (in which he had intended to make the rice cakes) and then, with his duffel bag over his shoulder and his scout staff in hand, he stepped from the Good Turn, listening cautiously for approaching footsteps, and finding the way clear he stole away through the darkness.