m to Mr. Ford, apprising him that his son was found.

Then Will told his story.

The first part the girls were already familiar with--how, tiring of life
in Uncle Isaac's mill, he had determined to strike out for himself.

"Then I fell in with a plausible talker," explained Will, "and he
persuaded me he had a great scheme for making money. Well, before I knew
it I had signed some papers--foolishly. At first I was given decent
clerical work to do, and then the scheme failed, I was transferred to
another part of the State, and to another company, and in some way, by a
juggling of contracts, not knowing what I was doing, it seems that I
signed an agreement to work in a timber camp. Say, it was worse than
being in prison, and some of the fellows were prisoners, I heard. There
were one or two others like myself; but we couldn't get away.

"Then I wrote that letter to dad and threw it out of the car window.
From then on I've lived a dog's life. I've been a regular slave. Many a
time I'd have given anything to be back, even with Uncle Isaac. This has
been a lesson to me."

Will went on to tell how he had been taken from place to place with the
others until he finally was held in the Everglade swamp, and made to get
out timber from the forest.

"I thought it was all up with me then," he said. "Before that I had met
this chap," and he nodded toward The Loon. "I thought he could help me,
and he promised to. I managed to speak to him on the quiet, and gave
him what money I had managed to hide away from those slave-drivers. He
went off, promising to bring help."

"And he tried, too," said Grace. "He helped us first, though." And she
told of getting the motor boat away from the manatee.

"Just to think!" cried Will. "There he was, talking to you girls all the
while, and me only a few miles away, though I was moved later."

"I--I'm sorry," spoke The Loon.

"Oh, you couldn't help it, Harry," voiced Betty, softly. "After all, it
came out all right, and you helped a lot."

"Indeed he did," agreed Tom Osborne. "Only for him Will and I might
still be prisoners."

Will related how he had broken from the shack shortly before the
rescuers reached the Everglade camp, and how, after much suffering,
having previously cut his foot, which made him lame, and wandering about
in the woods, he had made the raft and floated down the river. What
little food he had gave out, and he had fainted from weakness and
exposure just as the girls'