s catastrophe was being expressed in unstinted terms.

CHAPTER XIV

A QUOTATION

"Do help him, Tom!" cried Ruth Fielding, and she started for the spot
where the man and the skiff were sinking.

Tom cast aside his sweater, kicked his sneakers off, and plunged into the
tide. Ruth was quite as lightly dressed as Tom; but she saw that he could
do all that was necessary.

That was, to bring the frightened man ashore. This "hermit" as they called
him, was certainly very much afraid of the water.

He splashed a good deal, and Tom had to speak sharply to keep him from
getting a strangle-hold about his own neck.

"Jimminy! but that was a mean trick," panted Tom, when he got ashore with
the fisherman. "Somebody pulled the plug out of the bottom of the skiff
and first he knew, he was going down."

"It is a shame," agreed Ruth, looking at the victim of the joke curiously.

He was a thin-featured, austere looking man, scrupulously shaven, but with
rather long hair that had quite evidently been dyed. Now that it was
plastered to his crown by the salt water (for he had been completely
immersed more than once in his struggle with Tom Cameron) his hair was
shown to be quite thin and of a greenish tinge at the roots.

The shock of being dipped in the sea so unexpectedly was plainly no small
one for the hermit. He stood quite unsteadily on the strand, panting and
sputtering.

"Young dogs! No respect for age and ability in this generation. I might
have been drowned."

"Well, it's all over now," said Tom comfortingly. "Where do you live?"

"Over yonder, young man," replied the hermit, pointing to the ocean side
of the point.

"We will take you home. You lie down for a while and you will feel
better," Ruth said soothingly. "We will come back here afterward and get
your skiff ashore."

"Thank you, Miss," said the man courteously.

"I'll make those fellows who played the trick on you get the boat ashore,"
promised Tom, running for his shoes and sweater.

The hermit proved to be a very uncommunicative person. Ruth tried to get
him to talk about himself as they crossed the rocky spit, but all that he
said of a personal nature was that his name was "John."

His shack was certainly a lonely looking hovel. It faced the tumbling
Atlantic and it seemed rather an odd thing to Ruth that a man who was so
afraid of the sea should have selected such a spot for his home.

The hermit did not invite them to enter his abode. He