Then Captain Eri slid silently out of bed, dressed with elaborate precautions against noise, put on his cap, and tiptoed out of the house. He walked through the dripping grass, climbed the back fence and hurried to the hill where John Baxter had fallen. Once there, he looked carefully around to be sure that no one was watching. Orham, as a rule, is an early riser, but this morning most of the inhabitants, having been up for the greater part of the night, were making up lost sleep and the Captain was absolutely alone.
Assured of this, he turned to the bush underneath which he had hidden the burned coat, pushed aside the drenched boughs with their fading leaves and reached down for the tell-tale garment.
And then he made an unpleasant discovery. The coat was gone.
He spent an agitated quarter of an hour hunting through every clump of bushes in the immediate vicinity, but there was no doubt of it. Someone had been there before him and had taken the coat away.
CHAPTER VIII
HOUSEKEEPER AND BOOK AGENT
There was a knock on the door of Captain Perez's sleeping apartment.
“Cap'n Hedge,” said Mrs. Snow, “Cap'n Hedge! I'm sorry to wake you up, but it's 'most ten o'clock and—”
“What? Ten o'clock! Godfrey scissors! Of all the lazy—I'll be out in a jiffy. Perez, turn out there! Turn out, I tell you!”