en
he made friends along the water-front of Bolderhead!

"That's the feller," snarled my cousin--I could read his lips, although
the trio was across the narrow street as I went along the docks--and I
knew very well that he was hatching something against me with his two
friends.

But they were not likely to pitch upon me here in broad daylight, so I
paid them little heed at the moment. I found old Crab Bolster and his
skiff to lighter my cargo across the inlet, and when the boy came down
from the store with the barrow, Crab and I loaded the provisions and
spring water into his boat. Paul and his companions looked on,
whispering together now and then, from a neighboring wharf.

I was not wholly a fool if I _was_ so well satisfied with my own
smartness. My success in settling Mr. Chester Downes had of course given
me an inflated opinion of myself; but I knew better than to overlook the
possibility of my cousin being able to do me some mean trick, especially
with the help of the two fellows he was with.

When Crab Bolster and I set off in the skiff for the Wavecrest, I saw
Paul and his friends make for the ferry, and while I helped pull the
skiff in the drizzle of rain that swept across the harbor, I saw the
three board the ferryboat and land at the dock on the Neck near which we
lived.

I made Crab hustle the goods aboard and stowed all away in the cuddy
before I let the boatman put me ashore. Paul and his friends were
hanging about the landing.

"Keep your eye on my Wavecrest, will you, Lampton?" I said to the man
who owned the landing, and kept boats for hire. "Remember, nobody's to
go aboard of the sloop without my special permission," and I glanced
pointedly at my cousin.

"I'll see to that, sir," said Lampton, who was my friend, I knew. "And
in this weather, and with the wind the way she is, anybody would be
crazy to want to take a boat out through the breach."

I went back to the house in ample time for dinner, and Ham, who had been
on the watch, reported that my uncle had not again tried to enter the
house. But I was worried about Paul and his henchmen. I couldn't rest in
the house after dark. If they couldn't get a boat on the Neck side of
the harbor in which to go out to the Wavecrest, they might come across
from the town side and do her some damage.

Mother had come down to dinner and we had one of our old-fashioned,
homey meals, followed by a pleasant hour in the drawing-room, where she
played and sa