f the woods was his. Hervey had
made good. Why bother more about that?

So he just said, "Not hurt much, huh? Well, if you kids want to go up to
camp, we'll take care of this job."

"Whose car is this, anyway?" asked Bert Winton. "I never saw it before.
It's got bunged up a little, hey?"

Tom looked at the roadster rather interestedly, whistling to himself.

"It's gray," said Bert; "I never saw it before."

"It wasn't damaged in the flood," said Tom.

"Why wasn't it?" Roy demanded.

"Because it's facing down stream. Anything that hit it would have hit it
in the back. I don't know whose it is, but it came here damaged, if you
want to know."

"Sherlock Nobody Holmes, the boy detective," vociferated Roy. "We're not
going to let it worry our innocent young lives, anyway, are we, Gilly?
Oh, here comes somebody along the road! The plot grows thicker!"

Tom and Winton had cut through the woods, direct from the cove where
they had been assisting in throwing together the makeshift dam.
Fortunately the searchlight had made their journey easy. The figure
which now approached along the road turned out to be Ebon Berry, owner
of the wrecked garage, who had ventured forth from his home as soon as
the storm had abated.

"Well, 'tain't no use cryin' over spilled milk, as the feller says," he
observed as he contemplated the ruin all about him.

"You're about cleaned out, Mr. Berry," said Winton. "Whose car is this?
I never saw it before."

"That? Well, now, that belongs to a feller that left it here, oh, I
dunno, mebbe close onto a week ago. I ain't seed him since. Said he'd be
back for it nex' day. I ain't seed nothin' of 'im. I guess that's what
you'd call a racer, now, hain't it?"

"What are you going to do about it?" Tom asked. "It was damaged when it
came here, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it were. Well, now, I don't jes' know _what_ I'd auter do. Jes'
nothin', I guess."

"'Tisn't going to do it any good buried here in the mud," Tom said.

"Well, 'tain't my loss, ony six dollars storage."

"Let's give it the once over," Tom said, in a way of half interest. The
efforts of the night had been so strenuous that his casual interest in
the car was something in the form of relaxation. It interested him as
whittling a stick might have interested him. "Take a squint into that
pocket there, Roy."

There was nothing but a piece of cotton waste in the flap pocket of the
door nearest Roy, but Gilbert Tyson's ransacking of the other