n her, if it suit me."

If Dickory had waited a little he might have heard more, but he did not
wait; he quickly turned, and away he went in his boat. And away went
Martin Newcombe after him. But as the younger man was barefooted, the
other one could not keep up with him, and the canoe was pushed off
before he reached the water's edge.

"Stop, you young rascal!" cried Newcombe. "Where is Kate Bonnet? Stop!
and tell me where she is!"

Troubled as he was at the tale he was going to tell, Dickory laughed
aloud, and he paddled down the river as few in that region had ever
paddled before.

Madam Bonnet went into her house, and if she had met a maid-servant, it
might have been bad for that poor woman. She was not troubled about
Kate. She knew the young man to be Dickory Charter, and she was quite
sure that her step-daughter was in his mother's cottage. Why she
happened to be there, and what had become of the recreant Bonnet, the
equally recreant young woman could come and tell her whenever she saw
fit.

CHAPTER VI

A PAIR OF SHOES AND STOCKINGS

The tide was running down, and Dickory made a swift passage to the town.
Seeing on the pier the man from whom he had borrowed the rope, he
stopped to return him his property, and thinking that the good people of
the town should know that, no matter what had befallen Major Bonnet, his
daughter had not gone with him and was safe among friends, he mentioned
these facts to the man, but with very few details, being in a hurry to
return with his message.

Before he turned into the inlet, Dickory was called from the shore, and
to his surprise he saw his mother standing on the bank in front of a
mass of bushes, which concealed her from her house.

"Come here, Dickory," she said, "and tell me what you have heard?"

Her son told his doleful tale.

"I fear me, mother," he said, "that Major Bonnet's ship has gone on
some secret and bad business, and that he is mixed up in it. Else why
did he desert his daughter? And if he intended to take her with him,
that was worse."

"I don't know, Dickory," said good Dame Charter reflectively; "we must
not be too quick to believe harm of our fellow-beings. It does look bad,
as the townspeople thought, that Major Bonnet should own such a ship
with such a strange crew, but he is a man who knows his own business,
and may have had good reason for what he has done. He might have been
sailing out to some foreign part to bring back a rich car