"It doesn't make much difference whether it is deep or not," said Mr. Bobbsey, "they would probably have been drowned if they had fallen overboard. You must always be careful about boats," he cautioned the little fellow.
"I will," Freddie promised.
"That must be the lumber yard!" exclaimed Bert a little later, when they turned from the new orchard road into another highway.
"Yes, that is it," Mr. Bobbsey agreed. "I never came this way before.
It is a good road to know when you are in a hurry."
Mr. Mason's lumber yard, like that of Mr. Bobbsey, was partly on the edge of the lake, so the logs, boards and planks could be easily loaded and unloaded from boats. Part of the yard was on the other side of the road, back from the lake, and it was on this side that the office was built.
As Mr. Bobbsey and his two boys rode up in the automobile, they saw out in front of the office a strange and not very pleasant sight. A man stood there, roughly shaking a boy about Bert's age. The boy seemed to be crying, and trying to get away, but the man held him tightly by one arm, and shook him again and again.
"I don't like that," said Mr. Bobbsey in a low voice, as he stopped the automobile.
"What makes him do it?" asked Freddie. "Is the boy bad?"
"I'll teach you to make me lose money that way!" cried the man as he again roughly shook the boy. "You ought to have better sense than to be cheated that way! It wasn't your money that you lost, it was mine, and money isn't so easily made these days!"
"But I couldn't help it!" the boy cried, trying to pull his arm away.
He could not do this, for the man held it too tightly.