“Why, I think I saw a boy dressed that way this morning. As I was coming down the street, towards nine o’clock, I saw a boat going down stream with two people in it. First, I thought the one rowing was a girl; I took another look, and I could almost swear it was a boy dressed in white. They were gone down some distance, and so I couldn’t say for sure.”
Just then a young man of about twenty-one dressed in flannels joined the group.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m a stranger here, and am rowing down the river from LaCrosse to Dubuque. This morning I locked my boat here, leaving the oars in it, and went for breakfast and a little stroll into the country back of McGregor. My boat has disappeared.”
“Was it painted green?” inquired the first informant, “and did it ride rather high?”
“Yes, that’s the boat.”
“Well, the boat I saw, with, I thought, two boys in it, one in a white sailor suit, must have been your boat.”
“Strange!” exclaimed Clarence’s father. “My boy, I am sure, would not do such a thing.”
“What about the other boy?” said an old inhabitant. “There’s a no-account fellow here-abouts named Abe Thompson. He was the butcher’s boy and got fired early today. He’s disappeared this morning, too, and I’ll bet my boots that he’s the one who went off in that boat.”
“That reminds me,” put in another member of the group. “When the St. Paul came in here this morning, the passengers were all talking about a small boy rowing a boat up near Pictured Rocks, who tried to cross their bow. The Captain had to stop the steamboat and he said that the two boys in that boat seemed anxious to commit suicide. When the Captain roared at the oarsman and called him a jackass, the kid smiled and asked which one of the two he was speaking to.”
“That was my son Clarence beyond a doubt,” said Mr. Esmond with the suspicion of a smile. “It would be just like him to cut across the bow of a steamboat, and that question of his makes it a dead certainty. The boy sat up until one o’clock last night reading Treasure Island. He’s very impressionable, and he left the house this morning with his heart set upon meeting with an adventure of some sort or other. It’s near twelve o’clock now, and we were to start for the coast at one-forty. Can’t I get a motorboat around here somewhere?”