“And I am going to have it found.”
“That’s right, sir, too. Well, I hope you are satisfied, sir, that it was neither me nor Dan here as took it?”
“Of course I am.”
“Then what about old Brown?”
“Oh, no!” cried the boys, in a breath.
“Look here, sir,” said Buck, drawing himself up to his full height and seeming to swell out with some big idea; “it couldn’t have been neither Peter Dance nor Bob Bacon, ’cause they have got guns to use, and they both tells us lots of times that a gun has been a sort of plaything to them ever since they was babbies.”
“Of course,” said Mark huffily. “There you go, again, telling us what we know.”
Buck hit himself a sharp slap in the mouth as much as much as to say, “I’ve done”; and the little sailor grinned and said, “And then about old Mak and little Pig: you can’t sarch them, because there’s nothing to sarch.”
“Ah!” cried Mark. “I had forgotten all about that. I know now.”
“Hooroar!” said Dan. “He knows now! Found out where you have put it, sir?”