"What do you mean?" demanded Sam, looking around the room and for the first time suspecting what had taken place.
"Why, we mean that you had that wax figure of yours down here and we all thought it was a man."
"I don't blame you," said Sam solemnly. "That's one of the best wax dummies I ever made."
"But why did you leave it where you did?" inquired George.
"Why, I figured it out this way," said Sam slowly. "If a scarecrow will keep crows out of a cornfield, why couldn't I rig up something to scare off anybody that wanted to damage the Black Growler?"
"That's good sense," said Grant soberly.
"Of course it is sense," declared Sam. "I put the dummy down there so that if anybody looked into the boat-house he would see it and he would think somebody was on guard."
"That's right," said Fred. "We had two dummies on guard to-night. One inside the boat-house and one outside."
"That may be all true," spoke up George, "but there was only one of them that followed you into the river."
"You would feel better if you had," declared Fred. "Now, then, I don't see that there's anything more for us to do except to go back to bed."