“It’s in my pocket,” replied Fred. “We wish you would come up to our room, Mr. Button. We’ll give you the letter and tell you some other things we have found out besides.”
Accepting the invitation Mr. Button accompanied the boys to the room which Fred and John occupied and after he had seated himself in the chair which was offered him by John, Fred at once began his story.
“We found this letter, Mr. Button, as I told you. It must have dropped out of the pocket of that man on the island or else Mr. Halsey lost it. At any rate we thought it belonged either to me or to you and I guess there’s no question now that it is yours.”
Fred handed the letter to their visitor, who at once read it through and laughing lightly thrust it into his pocket. “It matches the other one,” he said, “and sounds very much as if they both were written by the same man.”
“We have found the man that wrote them.”
“Have you?” inquired Mr. Button quietly.
“Yes, sir. When John and I were taken by that boat which rescued us we couldn’t land until we came to Sault St. Marie. It was almost morning and we had a great time, as our clothes were wet and we left them on the boat after we had put on some duds the sailors gave us. We found we didn’t have any money when we went up town and tried to get some breakfast, and when we went back to the dock we were horrified to find that the boat had gone on without us. Her next stop probably is Duluth.”
“And she took your clothes with her?” inquired Mr. Button, smiling as he spoke.
“She did that,” declared Fred ruefully, “and that wasn’t all of it either, for in our pockets were all the valuable things we possessed, though I guess money wasn’t among them. By and by we found a strange man there who agreed to bring us back to Mackinac in his motor-boat if we would go with him around by Cockburn Island.”
“Was he a red-haired man with big splotches of red on his face? Was he tall and ungainly and did he have a voice that no one could ever forget if he once heard it?”