"There is your ha'nt!" he roared, pointing down into a pen in the shed. "There is your ha'nt! A gol-derned old sea-turtle! Haw! haw! haw! Ho! ho! ho! He! he! he!"
The turtle was a monster in size.
"But—I don't see!" said Merriwell. "This doesn't explain."
The landlord hopped into the pen and flipped the huge turtle over on its back against the wall. Thereupon it began to kick out with its great flippers, striking them against the corridor wall and making the sounds which had seemed to be footsteps. Merriwell looked round.
"I see!" he admitted. "The light from the lighted corridor came through that transom."
"Jest so!" said the landlord. "Whenever your light shined in here it scart the turtle, and it quit kickin'. It's always trying to climb out of the pen and falling over on its back; and when it tips over near the wall and strikes with them flippers, it makes that sound. If it ain't near the wall, of course it don't strike nothin' to make the sound. And, of course, soon's it can turn itself back—which it can't sometimes for hours—it quits kickin' out."
"And yez tuk me for thot thing and thot thing for me, and aitch av us knew nothing about it, and it wasn't ayther av us!" chuckled Barney.
"Just so!" said Merriwell. "And right glad I am to understand it, and to know that you are living!"
"And Oi niver wor gladder to see anybody in my loife! The soight av yez makes me well. And Bart, me jewel! Yez are as foine a laddie as iver lived! Give me the touch av yer hand ag'in!"
And so the mystery was solved, and Barney escaped, be it said, heartwhole and body free—while Frank and his friends returned to the city.