DURING the next forenoon the Dido and the pinkie were sailed up to their old berths in the creek. That night all the boats went out except the Dido, fading like ghosts into the misty, half-moonlit dusk. Reube was very indignant at the thought that Gandy might attack his shad net, and vowed, if he caught him at it, to clap him in jail. Mrs. Dare had made the boys take a pair of heavy blankets with them, and, stretched on these, they lay along the seat in the Dido’s stern, just under the shelter of the gunwale. The reel, with its dark burden of net, rose a few feet away, and stood out black but vague against the paler sky. Close at hand lay the wharf, like a crouching antediluvian monster, with its fore paws plunged into the tide.

From where they lay our watchers commanded a view of the surrounding levels by merely lifting their heads. In low but eager tones they discussed the Boston trip planned for the coming autumn, and Reube squeezed his comrade’s hand gratefully when he heard what company he and his mother would have.

“I can never tell your mother my gratitude,” said he. “With her there my anxiety will be more than half gone.”

“I’m so glad muzz thought of it!” said Will. “I’m sure it would never have entered my heedless head. And yet it is just the thing for us to do.”

Another subject of their excited colloquy was the disposal of those old coins. If deposited at the Barchester Bank they would certainly arouse comment and set all sorts of romantic stories going. But presently Will thought of his friend Mr. Hand, to whom all things in the way of financial management seemed possible. It was decided that on the very next day Will should take the whole store to him and get him to send it away for conversion into modern currency.

“And he’ll be able to see that we don’t get cheated,” added Will. “I fancy some of those coins will be wanted by collectors, and so be worth a lot more than their face value.”

“I tell you, Will,” exclaimed Reube, “I can’t even yet quite get over my astonishment at the way you swear by old Hand; or, perhaps I should rather say, at the way the old fellow seems to be developing qualities of which he was never suspected until you begun to thaw him out.”

“Indeed,” said Will, warmly, “Mr. Hand is fine stuff. He was like a piece of gold hidden in a mass of very refractory ore. But Toddles melted him down all right.”

In a short time conversation flagged, and then, listening to the lip-lip-lipping of the softly falling tide and the mellow far-off roar of the waters pouring through an aboideau, both the watchers grew drowsy. At last Will was asleep. Even Reube’s brain was getting entangled with confused and fleeting visions when he was brought sharply to himself by the queer sucking sound of footsteps in the mud.

He raised his head and peered over the gunwale. There was Mart Gandy within ten paces of the net reel. He had come by way of the dike. In his hand gleamed the polished curve of the sickle with which he was accustomed to reap his buckwheat, and Reube’s blood boiled at the thought of that long, keen blade working havoc in the meshes of his cherished nets. Gandy marched straight up to the reel, raised the sickle, and slashed viciously at the mass of woven twine.

Ere he could repeat the stroke a yell of wrath rang in his ear and Reube was upon him, hurling him to the ground. His deadly weapon flew from his grasp, and he was too startled to make much resistance. The weight of Reube’s knee on his chest, the clutch of Reube’s strong fingers at his throat, took all the fight out of him. He looked up with angry and frightened eyes and saw Will standing by, a meaning smile on his lips and a heavy tarred rope’s end in his hand.

Reube rubbed the culprit’s head rudely in the mud, and then relaxed the grip upon his gasping throat.

“I cannot pound the scoundrel now that I’ve got him down,” said he, turning his face toward Will. “What shall we do with him? You can’t lather a chap that doesn’t resist and that has his head down in the mud. It’s brutal!”

“We’ll tie his hands to the reel and give him a taste of this rope’s end,” suggested Will, judiciously.

“I don’t exactly like that either,” said Reube, rubbing his captive’s head again in the slime. “It’s too much like playing hangman. He deserves the cat-o’-nine-tails if ever a scoundrel did, but I don’t like the dirty work of applying it. We’d better just take him to jail. Then he’ll get a term in the penitentiary, and be out of the way for a few years. Fetch me that cod line out of the cuddy, will you?”

By this time Mart Gandy had found his voice. That word “penitentiary” had reduced him to an abject state of terror, and he began to plead piteously for mercy.

“Lick me! Lick me all you like!” he cried, in his queer, high voice. “I kin take a hidin’; but don’t send me to the penitentiary! What’d the old man do, as hain’t got his right senses no more? An’ the old woman’d jest plumb starve, for the gals they ain’t a mite o’ good to work. Le’ me off this time, Reube Dare, ’n’ I declare I won’t never do it ag’in!”

Mart’s imploring voice more than his words made Reube weaken in his purpose. As for Mart’s promise, he put no faith in that, and marked on Will’s face an unrelenting grin. Nevertheless he said:

“There’s something in what the rascal says, Will. If Mart goes to the penitentiary his family’s going to suffer more than he. I’ve a mind to let him off this time, after all.”

“Well,” grunted Will, “just as you say. But it would be nothing short of iniquitous to let him off altogether. You’d better give him a good ducking, to let him know you’re in earnest, anyway.”

Reube pondered this a moment.

“Mart Gandy,” he said, sternly, “I’m going to let you off this time with nothing more than a ducking, to fix the circumstance in your mind. But remember, if I find you again at any of your old pranks I’ll have a warrant out against you that very day! And I’ve got all the evidence needed to convict you. Now get up!” And he jerked the lanky and bedraggled form to its feet.

Mart, with the fear of prison walls no longer chilling his heart, had recovered himself during this harangue, and his eyes gleamed with a furtive, half-wild hate. Still he made no resistance. The sickle lay far beyond his reach, and he knew he was physically no match for either Reube or Will. He was led to the very edge of the steep, slippery incline of the channel, wherein the tide had dropped about fifteen feet. Will snatched a coil of rope out of the boat.

“Can you swim?” he asked, curtly.

“No,” said the fellow, eyeing him sidewise.

“He is lying,” remarked Reube, in a businesslike voice.

“Well,” said Will, “if he isn’t lying we’ll fish him out again, that’s all.”

Just as he was speaking, and while Gandy’s eyes were fixed upon his face with an evil light in them, Reube stepped forward and executed a certain dexterous trip of which he was master. Gandy’s heels flew out over the brink, his head went back, and, feet foremost, he shot like lightning down the slope and into the stream.

In a moment he came to the surface and began floundering and struggling like a drowning man.

“He’s putting that all on,” said Reube.

“Maybe not,” exclaimed Will. “Better throw him the end of the rope now.”

Reube smiled, gravely, but obeyed and a coil fell almost in Gandy’s arms. The struggling man seemed too bewildered to catch it. He grasped at it wildly, sank, rose, sank, and rose again. Will prepared to jump in and rescue him. But Reube interposed.

“No, you don’t,” said he, coolly; “not without one end of this rope round your waist and me hanging onto the other end!”

“Make haste, then,” cried Will, in some anxiety.

In a few seconds the rope was knotted firmly about Will’s waist, and he sprang into the water. Even as he did so the apparently drowning man disappeared. He came up again many feet away, and, swimming with wonderful speed, gained the opposite bank. He clambered nimbly up the slope and started at a run across the marsh. Reube, with derisive compliments, helped the dripping and disgusted Will to shore again.

“I saw his game,” said he, while Will wrung out his clothes. “He’s just like a fish in the water, and he thought he’d make believe he was drowning, and so manage to drag you down without getting blamed for it. But he knew the game was up when he heard what I said and saw you had the rope tied to you.”

“Right you are this time, old man,” said Will.

The sky had cleared perfectly, and in the radiant moonlight Reube’s skillful fingers quickly mended the net. The cut was not a deep one, as the blade had been stopped by two of the large wooden floats with which the net was beaded. The mending done and the net made ready for the next night’s fishing, the boys turned their faces toward the uplands to seek a few hours’ sleep at Mrs. Dare’s.

Meanwhile Mart Gandy had never ceased running till he got behind an old barn which hid him from the scene of his punishment. Then he turned and shook his long, dark finger in silent fury toward the spot where his antagonists were working. When he reached home he crept to a loft in the shed and drew out a long, heavy musket, once a flintlock, which he had altered to a percussion lock, so that it made an effective weapon for duck shooting. This gun he loaded with a heavy charge of powder and a liberal proportion of buckshot. He muttered over his task till it was done to his satisfaction, and then stole off to sleep in the barn.