"It is. But who the dickens are you? Here, wait till I get another match." So saying, the lad kindled another lucifer.
As its light fell on the features of the man who had sprung out on them, both lads gave an exclamation of dumfounded amazement:
"Sam Hartley!"
"Yes, it's me, all right!" rejoined the detective, with scant regard for grammar. "But what in the world brings Sandy MacTavish and Jack Dacre here?"
"The same agency which brought you, I guess," exclaimed Jack; "a band of rascals. But tell us what this place is, and how they ever entrapped you in it."
The Secret Service man who had aided the boys in the valley against the counterfeiters and again helped them when in peril from Chinese smugglers in the Great Northwest, soon told his story.
He had been sent out by the Department of Justice to round up the gang of miscreants that had been decoying vessels to their fate by false lights. As usual, he worked alone, and, disguised as a fisherman, collected much evidence against them. But in some way they came to suspect him, and one night they raided the hut in which he had taken up his abode, and made him prisoner. Ever since then they had kept him a captive, trying, without success, to get him to reveal how much evidence he had gathered.
"But why didn't the government search for you?" asked Jack.
"Why, they know I always work alone, and sometimes don't communicate with Washington for months. I suppose, in time, they'd have organized a hunt for me, but by that time, I guess, there wouldn't have been much of me left to find." He held up a skinny arm.
"I tell you, the board and lodging at this place is something fierce," he said, with an attempt to turn his misery into a joke, in his old cheerful fashion.