e got the
measles."

"Nonsense! Let me take a look at you." His eyes were reddened to an
alarming degree, but there seemed little else the matter.

"He did," John insisted. "Told me to stay home today to see if they got
worse. Silvey and I are going fishing."

"Fishing! And coming down with the measles?"

He protested volubly. His head felt heavy and kind of funny, but he
didn't think that lazying around on the pier would be harmful. The
sunshine might do him good.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Fletcher a second time and with increased
emphasis. She turned to Silvey. "You can go home, Bill. John can't come
out. He's going to stay in bed until he gets better."

John trudged wearily up the interminable stairs to his little tan-walled
room.

Shucks, it was just his luck! Look at Al Harrison. He came home with a
sore throat and was allowed to play football and fool around as he
pleased, while he, John Fletcher, was ordered to bed because the school
doctor feared measles.

A fellow had returned from the pier with a string of perch a yard long
dangling from his pole. "Fishing good? Say, kid, this ain't nothing to
what some of 'em have caught!" And he was condemned to a day's
imprisonment while they were biting that way. It was a shame, tyranny,
oppression worse than the old slaves labored under in _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_. He'd run away from home, he would. Perhaps his uncle would give
him a job on the Michigan farm if he worked his way up there. Or else he
could commit suicide. There was the long, shiny, carving knife in the
kitchen table drawer. He'd just bet his mother would be sorry if he used
it.

Instead, he threw his clothes sulkily over the back of the wicker chair
and, after some deliberation, drew a well-thumbed, red-covered book from
his library shelves. Sherlock Holmes was a far better panacea for his
troubles than the big carving knife.

He had read and reread the tale until the episodes were known almost by
heart, but still _The Sign of the Four_ held powerful sway over his
imagination. Thaddeus Sholto lived again to tell his nervous, halting
tale to the astute Baker Street detective. Tobey took the two eager
sleuths through the episode of the trail which led to the creosote
barrels. Holmes appeared and reappeared on his fruitless expeditions as
the boy's eyes narrowed with excitement, and his figure straightened and
his breathing quickened as he followed the police boat in the thrilling
pursuit of Tonga