ecome unconscious
again. A part of the time I was unconscious.

"Well after daylight I saw a sloop headed my way. It didn't look as though
it would go straight by either. So I waved my handkerchief---my hat was
gone. After a while the skipper of the sloop saw me and headed in for me.
It was a sloop that carries the mails to Hetherton, a village that has no
rail connection.

"The captain hauled me aboard, questioned me, looked as though he more than
half doubted my yarn, and then put me to bed in the cabin of the sloop.
He attended to me as best he could. When we reached Hetherton, about noon,
a doctor patched me up. I had something to eat, bought this new hat, and
hired a driver to take me ten miles to the railway. Then I came over here
as soon as I could, and---pardon me, but I'm feeling weak. I'll sit down
right here."

Harry sat down heavily on the wall.

"Why didn't you wire me?" asked Tom.

"Why, you didn't doubt but that I'd turn up as surely as any other bad
egg, did you?" questioned Harry, looking up.

"Chum, I wouldn't admit it, even to myself, but I feared you were dead.
But we mustn't waste time talking. Describe that black man to me, and---"

"And the company will hire detectives to start right on the trail of that
negro," interjected Mr. Prenter.

"If---if the expense is really warranted," ended Mr. Bascomb, cautiously.

"Warranted?" retorted the treasurer of the Melliston Company. "Why, it
is absolutely necessary to protect our work here! That big negro is the
key to the mystery. We must catch him if it costs us a thousand dollars."

"Oh, well," assented President Bascomb, reluctantly.

"I---I guess I'm all right to start in to work now," Harry suggested,
trying to rise.

"Sit down---you're not!" replied Tom and Treasurer Prenter, in the same
breath, as both pressed Harry back to the wall.

"We don't need work so much to-day," Mr. Prenter continued. "What we want
to do is to solve this mystery. You stay here, Hazelton. I'll go back
alone and find a 'bus or a carriage. Then we'll go back to camp and hold
a council of war. Something must be done, and we'll decide _how_ it's to
be done."

Mr. Prenter, though no longer a young man, proved that he carried both
speed and agility in his feet. While he was gone Tom endeavored to get a
few more particulars from Harry, but Hazelton simply didn't know anything
that threw any more light on the dread mystery of the breakwater.

"Then