nk took after him calling:

"Hey! Hey! Wait a minute! Stop!"

CHAPTER XIII

A MIDNIGHT SCARE

There was a trolley line, newly built, which ran through Seabright,
touching some of the other seacoast towns, but not Harbor View. As
luck would have it, just when Frank Racer took after the strange man,
hoping to make him stop by calling to him, one of the trolley cars came
past.

In a flash the man had jumped aboard the electric vehicle, and, as fate
would have it, the motorman happened to be behind time. No sooner was
the queer stranger in the car, which had not even stopped for him, than
the knight of the controller handle swung it clear around in an
endeavor to keep up to his schedule, and with a whizz the car darted
off.

"Wait! Wait!" yelled Frank, waving at the conductor. The latter
shouted something, what it was the lad could not make out. Andy rushed
up and joined his brother.

"Missed him; didn't we?" exclaimed the younger lad ruefully.

"Yes, worse luck," replied Frank. "He always seems to get away from
us."

"There'll be another car along in fifteen minutes, boys," said a kindly
fisherman passing along.

"It wasn't the car we wanted, it was someone on it," answered Frank.
"Fifteen minutes will give him such a start that we can't follow him."

"Was he a pickpocket?" asked the fisherman.

"We don't know what he was," said Andy. "Come on, Frank, we'll go back
and talk to Jim Hedson."

"I was thinking of taking the next car, and keeping after this fellow,"
spoke Frank, with his usual determined manner.

"What would be the use?" asked Andy, who generally took the easiest
way. "He might get off anywhere along the line, and we could hunt all
day and not find him. It would be time wasted."

"I guess you're right," assented Frank, with a sigh. "But I hate to
give up. I'm sure there's some great mystery back of all this, and
Paul and that man are in some manner connected with it. I shouldn't be
surprised if that man had wronged Paul in some way."

"How, by taking his motor boat?"

"No, in some other way. It was a queer thing why Paul should be out in
his boat alone in the blow. Then to have the boat disappear, and to be
seen again towed by this man."

"You're not sure of the last part."

"I am pretty sure. But let's ask Mr. Hedson what he knows about it."

The boys did not find the boatman in a very kindly frame of mind. He
greeted them rather sulkily as they approached: