Sam, who demanded in no very
gentle tones:

"Well, who's going ashore? I'm off."

"No hurry, Sam," said Jack in a more amiable tone than he had yet used
that morning. "Let's sit around here a while and enjoy the sun--we
might take a swim after a while."

"If you don't come now you'll have to swim ashore," grunted Sam,
arising and brushing the sand from himself. "I'm going back to
Hampton. I'm tired of camping out here."

He walked toward the beach and prepared to shove off the dinghy,
preparatory to sculling out to the hydroplane, which lay a few rods off
shore in the channel.

"Hold on, Sam," cried Bill; "we're coming. Don't go away sore."

"I'm not sore," rejoined Sam, in a tone which belied his words, "but I
don't think you fellows are doing the right thing when you maroon a kid
like Joe Digby on a lone island, in a deserted bungalow in which you'd
be scared to stop yourselves."

"Why, what's got into you, Sam?" protested Jack. "It's more a lark
than anything else."

"Fine lark," grunted Sam, "scaring a kid half to death and then writing
notes for money. It's dangerously near to kidnapping--that's what I
call it, and I'm glad I'm not in it."

Both the others looked rather uncomfortable at this presentation of the
matter, but Jack affected to laugh it off.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, "it's a little bit rough, I know, but such
things do a kid good. Teach him to be self-reliant and--and all that."

"Sure," agreed Bill, "you don't look at these things in the right
light, Sam--does he, Hank?"

Hank, who had shuffled toward the dinghy at the conclusion of these
edifying remarks, agreed with a chuckle that Sam had no sense of humor,
after which they all got into the dinghy and we sculled off to the
unlucky hydroplane.

It didn't take long to get under way, and the little craft was soon
scudding through the water at a good pace, towing the dinghy behind her.

"Better put us ashore before we get into Hampton," suggested Bill. "We
don't want to be seen about there more than can be helped."

"That's where you are wrong," objected Jack. "We'll put Hank ashore up
the coast, but the more we are seen about the place the better. It
won't look as if we had anything to do with the Digby kid--in case
things do go wrong."

So it was agreed that Hank was to be landed in a small cove a few miles
farther down the coast, from which it was a short cut across country to
the neighborhood of the Digby farm.

Then h