ist of a windowed packing-box
inhabited by a hermit in a brass-buttoned blue. This lonely official
readily identified the subjects of Average Jones' inquiry.

"I guess I know your friends, all right. The dago was tall and thin and
had white hair; almost snow-white. No, he wasn't old, neither. He talked
very soft and slow. Used to stay off in the reeds three and four days
at a time. No, ain't seen him for near a week; him nor his boat nor
the young fellow that was with him. Sort of bugologists, or something,
wasn't they."

"Have you any idea where we could find their camp?"

The railroad man laughed.

"Fine chance you got of finding anything in that swamp. There's ten
square miles of it, every square just like every other square, and
a hundred little islands, and a thousand creeks and rivers winding
through."

"You're right," agreed Average Jones. "It would take a month to search
it. You spoke of a boat."

"It's my notion they must have had a houseboat. They could a-rowed it up
on the tide from the Kills--a little one. I never saw no tent with 'em.
And they had to have something over their heads. The boat I seen 'em
have was a rowboat. I s'pose they used it to go back and forth in."

"Thanks," said Average Jones. "That's a good idea about the houseboat."

On the following day this advertisement appeared in the newspapers of
several shore towns along the New Jersey and Staten Island coast.

A DRIFT--A small houseboat lost several
days ago from the Hackensack Meadows.
Fifty dollars reward paid for information
leading to recovery. Jones, Ad-Visor,
Astor Court Temple, New York.

Two days later came a reply, locating the lost craft at Bayonne.
Average Jones went thither and identified it. Within its single room
was uttermost confusion, testifying to the simplest kind of housekeeping
sharply terminated. Attempt had been made to burn the boat before it was
given to wind and current, but certain evidences of charred wood, and
the fact of a succession of furious thunder-showers in the week past,
suggested the reason for failure. In a heap of rubbish, where the
fire had apparently started, Average Jones found, first, a Washington
newspaper, which he pocketed; next, with a swelling heart, the wreck of
the pasteboard cabinet, but no sign of the strange valise which had held
it. The "Mercy" sign was gone from the cabinet, its place being supplied
by a placard, larger, in a different handwriting,