The first part the girls were already familiar with—how, tiring of life in Uncle Isaac's mill, he had determined to strike out for himself.
"Then I fell in with a plausible talker," explained Will, "and he persuaded me he had a great scheme for making money. Well, before I knew it I had signed some papers—foolishly. At first I was given decent clerical work to do, and then the scheme failed, I was transferred to another part of the State, and to another company, and in some way, by a juggling of contracts, not knowing what I was doing, it seems that I signed an agreement to work in a timber camp. Say, it was worse than being in prison, and some of the fellows were prisoners, I heard. There were one or two others like myself; but we couldn't get away.
"Then I wrote that letter to dad and threw it out of the car window. From then on I've lived a dog's life. I've been a regular slave. Many a time I'd have given anything to be back, even with Uncle Isaac. This has been a lesson to me."
Will went on to tell how he had been taken from place to place with the others until he finally was held in the Everglade swamp, and made to get out timber from the forest.
"I thought it was all up with me then," he said. "Before that I had met this chap," and he nodded toward The Loon. "I thought he could help me, and he promised to. I managed to speak to him on the quiet, and gave him what money I had managed to hide away from those slave-drivers. He went off, promising to bring help."
"And he tried, too," said Grace. "He helped us first, though." And she told of getting the motor boat away from the manatee.
"Just to think!" cried Will. "There he was, talking to you girls all the while, and me only a few miles away, though I was moved later."
"I—I'm sorry," spoke The Loon.
"Oh, you couldn't help it, Harry," voiced Betty, softly. "After all, it came out all right, and you helped a lot."
"Indeed he did," agreed Tom Osborne. "Only for him Will and I might still be prisoners."