Ben took a mussed-up envelope from the hand of his chum. It was directed in crooked, printed letters: “mister tom barns.”
“I found it stuck under our front door last night, as I told you,” recounted Tom, and Ben perused the enclosed sheet covered with straggling words and sentences, and read it aloud:
“Warnin to tom barns, keep yure own turtory,
or it’l be the worst fer you and yer frens.
sined: the Black Kaps.”
“Sort of blood-curdling, eh, Ben?” mused Tom.
“It don’t scare you one little bit?”
“Not a particle.”
“What does it mean?”
“Why, Ben, the only way I can figure out, is that the so-called Black Caps are in active operation again.”
“Phew!” observed Ben, and fell into a prolonged fit of musing. Both he and Tom were quite familiar with the past operations of that sinister concern. Like all country communities, Rockley Cove had some undesirables. Over the village line, in fact, between it and the residence of the Morgans, was a little community of fishermen whose social condition was not very high.
One particular family with numerous branches was quite notorious. The name was Barber, and the younger members of the family constituted an uncouth and troublesome set. They and some neighboring lads formed what they called a secret society called the “Black Caps.” They soon became the terror of adjoining communities.