“Well, they would ’a’ been if they could ’a’ found the chest of gold!” declared Sammy. “Hi, where you goin’ with my alligator, Dot?” he called, for he had brought his Palm Island pet over to the Corner House with him, following the giving up of the search on the part of Luke and the others.
“I’m not going anywhere with your old alligator,” Dot answered. “But he’s wiggled himself down cellar and I’m going after him, so there!”
Sammy was eager to hear all the particulars of the night’s chase, and he did not go down cellar, even to rescue his beloved saurian. Dot, however, was not one to give up once she started a mission, and presently she was heard moving about amid the boxes and barrels, doubtless after the scaly creature.
“Well, there’s one thing we won’t have to worry about,” said Ruth, “and that is the presence of those two mysterious men. When we didn’t know who they were and what they were after, it was a constant source of anxiety. Now they have gone for good.”
At that moment Dot came up out of the cellar and hurried to where all the others were sitting in chairs beneath the shade of the grape arbor near the rear door. There was a strange look on her face.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ruth, sensing that something had happened.
“Sammy’s alligator! He went down in the cellar, and I went after him and—and—” began Dot excitedly.
“Well, is he lost or did you find him?” interrupted Sammy. “If he’s gone, Dot Kenway——”
“No, he isn’t zactly gone,” explained Dot, with wounded dignity. “But he crawled in a crack between two stones and only his tail was sticking out and I got hold of it and I pulled, and it—it came right out!”
“Mercy! You don’t mean to say you pulled off the poor alligator’s tail, did you?” cried Agnes.