ncerning the cost of a piece of land
overlooking the blue bay.

The very night that Code and Elsa had their last talk Nat Burns was
smuggled aboard a motor sloop lying in Whale Cove and taken over to
Eastport, where he was turned loose in the United States.

Half of the value of the _Nettie_ was eaten up by his debts and damage
settlements, and so, the better to clear the whole matter up, he sold
her at auction inside a week and departed with the remnants of his
cash to parts unknown.

Since that time not a word or trace of him had been heard in Freekirk
Head except once. That was when the St. John's paper printed a
photograph of an automobile that made a trip across the Hudson Bay
country.

Beside the machine stood a man in furs who was claimed by all who saw
the picture to be Nat Burns. Was he running a trap line in the wilds
with the Indians, or was he a passenger in the car under an assumed
name?

Elsa Mallaby did not even wait for the departure of the _Charming
Lass_ on her second voyage before she acted on a determination that
had come to her. She shut up Mallaby House entirely, and, with
Caroline as her companion, started on a trip around the world,
promising to be back in three years.

But she did not go on the mystery schooner, nor did anybody ever see
or hear of it again.

It soon developed that the government officials were hard after the
boat that had impersonated a gunboat, and would make it very hot both
for owners and crew. Elsa knew this the day she made her final
triumphant dash into Freekirk Head, and that was the reason that the
ship only stayed ten minutes.

So quietly and skilfully was the whole thing managed that, in the
excitement of Code's arrest, every one thought Elsa and her sister had
come on the evening boat from St. John's.

Not three men in the island would have connected her with this strange
craft, and two of those weren't sure enough of anything to speak above
a whisper. The third was Code Schofield.

Captain Foraker took the mystery schooner outside the harbor, pointed
her nose straight south by the compass, and held her there for a
matter of ten days. At the end of that time he was in danger of
pushing Haiti off the map, so he went to Port-au-Prince and sold the
schooner at a bargain to the government, which, at that time, happened
to need a first-class battle-ship. Then Captain Foraker and the crew
divided the money (by Elsa's orders), and returned to the States.

It