“Look!” he shouted. “They’ll never let us land there!”
He pointed to a large sign, and, even from where they were, the boys could read that all trespassers were warned off under the “full penalty of the law.”
“Hum!” grumbled Jerry. “They didn’t lose any time. I wonder what’s up?”
“Let’s go as near as we can and see,” suggested Bob, and he steered the boat to the usual landing place. But that was as far as it could go. Barbed wire stretched across the right of way by which Mrs. Hopkins’s land had formerly been reached, and there was another sign which warned trespassers away.
Across the swamp a number of men, with big rubber boots, and long-handled shovels, could be seen working. And it needed no very intent observer to see that they were taking out quantities of the yellow clay. It was not excavating work at all; it was more like mining—mining for mud.
“I thought so!” remarked Jerry. “But what’s it good for? That’s what gets me. What in the world are they doing with it?”
“I guess that’s for us to find out,” spoke Ned. “We can’t go any closer, that’s evident.”
“No,” agreed Jerry, in a low voice.
As he spoke there was a movement among the diggers, and a figure detached itself from among them and came forward.
“For the love of stamps!” cried Bob. “Look who’s here—Noddy Nixon!”