“Good ernuff, boy,” responded the elder Daniels, for most of our readers must be aware by this time of the identity of the two newcomers; “but who do yer suppose he is? He’s dressed like one of them fancy sailors off’n a yacht.”
“Dad, I figger he’s a detective sent here by them kids on Brig Island. That’s the way it looks to me.”
“I guess you’re right, Zeb. Here, give me a hand to get him up on the bunk. By hickory, but you must have hit him a clip.”
“Reckon I did land kind er hard on him, dad, but I wasn’t takin’ chances of his turning on me.”
The two worthies lifted Duval’s limp form and laid it, not over-gently, on the tumbled pile of frowsy blankets. This done, a sudden thought struck the elder Daniels.
“Calkerlate I’ll take a look through his pockets,” he said; “might rummage out something worth havin’.”
Zeb helped his father in this task; but aside from a small sum of money, and a collection of worthless odds and ends, they found nothing that appeared to them to be of importance. In an inner pocket Zeb came across the stolen map. Much mystified, he showed it to his father.
“What do you think this kin be, pop?” he inquired.
The old man took it and knitted his brow over the document in a puzzled fashion.
“By hickory, I kain’t make it out,” he confessed; “thar’s some riting in ther corner, though. Spell it out, Zeb.”