“I won’t give it up!” cried Tom, his eyes snapping; and preparing to leave the tower at once. “I’ll find the man I saw at the river if I have to chase him all over the state.”
“Well, you see, you’d know him by sight, and we wouldn’t,” submitted Ben.
“I feel it my duty to do all I can to find Harry,” proceeded Tom. “At any rate, I am going to try. You stay on duty at the station, Ben. It simply isn’t in me to remain quiet where we don’t know what fate may threaten that poor boy.”
Now, after leaving the tower, Tom had met Dr. Burr, and hurried homewards. He took a look at the newspaper the physician had given him. Its heading told that it was a daily print from a nearby city, received at Rockley Cove by a few residents early in the morning.
Tom, as has been said, was in urgent haste, but one glance at the printed sheet halted him as suddenly as if it had been a warrant presented unexpectedly by an officer of the law.
In glaring headlines the feature of the news of the day, the rescue of the passengers of the Olivia, was indicated. In bold, broad type his name stood out as the hero of a grand occasion. Tom’s eye lit up as in the same glaring type he read also the name of his loyal adherent, Bill Barber. It was “William Barber,” the dignified way the paper put it, and Tom was unutterably glad.
He merely skimmed the three columns of details that followed. Then he crumpled up the paper and started on a run for home with the breathless exclamation:
“It’s wonderful!”
Tom did not mean that the chronicled rescue was wonderful. He was too modest for that. What stirred and startled him were the remarkable evidences of journalistic ability displayed by the newspaper. He decided that after he and Bill had left Brookville the captain of the Olivia must have got in immediate connection with New York and other places by telegraph.
“He must have had a busy time of it, giving all those details,” ruminated Tom. “They have made a big thing of it, sure enough. Well, it will please father and mother, and as for myself—I hope I deserve all they say about me.”