"I'd like to know what you are about!"
"Would! Well, I can soon tell you," replied Bill. "You are one of those fellows who robbed our potato-patches, aint you?"
"Do I look like a boy of that kind?" demanded Johnny, indignantly. "I never saw your potato-patch, and I don't know that you have one."
"Now, just look a here," said Bill, "what's the use of telling that?"
"It's the truth," protested the prisoner. "My name is John Harding, and I am clerk in Mr. Henry's grocery store, which has just been robbed of seven thousand dollars. I was in pursuit of the burglars when you caught me. I am not in the habit of telling lies," he added, more angrily than ever, noticing that the young farmers smiled derisively as they listened to his story. "All you have to do is to go back to the beach with me, and I will soon convince you that I am not trying to deceive you."
"You want us to take you there, so that your friends can release you, I suppose," said Josh. "We gagged you to prevent you from giving the alarm."
"You need not have put yourselves to so much trouble, for I haven't a friend on the island. I came here alone. Let me loose, can't you? I don't want to be confined here like a felon."
The farmers had been so nicely outwitted by the Crusoe men that they were very suspicious, and, believing that Johnny's story had been invented for the occasion, they did not put the least faith in it. They had caught him prowling about in the vicinity of the potato-patch, and that, in their eyes, was evidence strong enough to condemn him. Johnny said every thing he could to induce them to believe that he was really what he represented himself to be. He told how the burglars had effected an entrance into the store, described the operation of blowing open the safe, and even mentioned the fact of having heard somebody shouting for help while he was standing on the cliff. Then the farmers, for the first time, became interested.
"Perhaps it's Jed," said Bill. "He is our brother," he added, in answer to an inquiring look from Johnny. "He went out with us after the fellows who cut down the cellar door, and he hasn't come back yet. We had better go down there, for he may have fallen over the cliff."
"You will take me with you, will you not?" inquired Johnny.