rd!"

"I wonder if he has his wrist watch on," laughed Roy.

"It's all right," called Henry, not wishing his sister and the other
girls to be needlessly frightened. "We're coming back."

"Did you get them?" asked Betty, from the darkness.

"No, they got away in a boat," answered Allen. "Is anyone hurt?"

"No, but the servants and mother are quite frightened. Could you see who
they were?"

"No. Evidently tramps, or fishermen. We'll have to have a look at
those----"

Allen did not complete the sentence, but they all knew to what he
referred.

"So you--er--missed them?" questioned Percy, when the two groups were
together again. "Too bad! I was just coming to join you. I had to have a
weapon, you know, and I found--this."

He showed a little stick which he had picked up.

"I should have hit them with it had I gotten near enough," he went on,
seriously--for him.

"It's a good thing you didn't," spoke Roy. "You might have killed one of
them with that, Percy."

"Oh, so I should! I--I can strike very hard when I am angry. I am just
as well pleased that there was no need for desperate measures. I really
am!"

But no one paid any attention to him now, though he tried to walk beside
Betty. Allen and Roy had taken this vantage place, one on either side of
the Little Captain.

"Betty, where are you?" called Mrs. Nelson, from the darkness.

"Here, Mother. Don't worry. It's all right. The men got away in a boat.
We are coming in to hear all about it."

The story was soon told.

One of the maids, going down cellar to get something from the food
store-room, had surprised a man prowling about with an electric
flashlight.

The girl screamed, and her cries were augmented by the yells of another
domestic in the kitchen.

Then the first girl saw two other men come from some part of the cellar
and join the first one. They ran out just as the boys came up, and the
fruitless chase resulted.

"What sort of men were they?" asked Betty of the girl who had given the
alarm.

"Oh, I don't know, Miss Betty," was the half-sobbed reply.

"But you must know! Did he wear a tall hat or----"

"A tall hat? Of course not, miss. He was like a tramp, or a
fisherman--maybe a clammer."

"That's how I sized them up," Allen said. "Fishermen. Did they say
anything to you?" he asked the maid.

"Not a thing--no, sir. He just caught his breath, sort of frightened
like, and ran out."

"Did the one you saw call to the others?"

"Oh,