"Oh! next time we'll probably cruise and camp together, and then we all can enjoy some of his wonderful cooking," Nick hastened to add, feeling that it might pay to flatter his old enemy a little, if he expected to profit by it in the future.
And here for the present we must take leave of our motor boat chums, in the belief that the record of their adventurous dash for the Dixie cup may have proved pleasant reading to our boys, who will be only too glad to meet them once again in the succeeding volume of this series, now published under the name of "The Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence; or, Solving a Mystery of the Thousand Islands."
Shortly after the return of the club from their Mississippi cruise Jack and Jimmie had the pleasure of being invited over to take dinner with Mr. Gregory, the president of the Waverly bank. He gave them a copy of a resolution of thanks passed by the board of directors after his return with all the missing funds and securities that had been stolen.
There were also two checks, each of twenty-five hundred dollars, for the boys, Jack having insisted that it must be share and share alike between himself and Jimmie.
The boys deposited their money in a savings bank, where it would lie at compound interest, and be handy in case they were in need of funds at any future time.
THE END.
AN AWAKENING AT ALVIN.
Alvin is a small town in eastern Illinois, a short distance north of Danville, and is a junction of a branch of the Wabash system with the Chicago & Eastern Illinois railroad. The place is large enough to stand the racket of a small brass band, but not of sufficient consequence to support a hotel or bakery. It was evident that either the postal clerk running on the Wabash branch or some person in the Alvin post-office was stealing ordinary letters and rifling registers.
After a two-hours' consultation on the case by a committee of three, Henshaw, "Judge" Bedell, and myself, it was unanimously decided that the work was not being done by the postal clerk. It was too well performed. No living being on a railroad train, by any known or unknown art, could cut and reseal a registered package envelope as artistically as these had been cut and resealed. There was no record of any work of the kind that approached it.