“How many years have you been coming here?” broke in John.
“Fourteen.”
“And you never saw this man until this summer?”
“No. Why?”
“Oh, nothing much. I just wanted to know. I had an idea somehow that he belonged to this part of the country and that perhaps he was here every summer.”
“No, sir,” answered the clerk. “This is the first summer he has shown up on Mackinac Island.”
“You mean it is the first time he has shown up at your hotel,” suggested John.
“No, I don’t mean anything of the kind. I mean just what I say, that this is the first summer he has been seen on the island.”
John said no more and turned away. He had decided that he would go out to the piazza and see if this mysterious man was still there. Was it possible that he had been mistaken? Was not this the man who had received them in his strange house on Cockburn Island the preceding day? If any questions concerning the identity of the man remained in John’s mind they were quickly dispelled when he glanced toward the dock and there saw the newcomer talking to the captain of the Gadabout.
At that moment the other three boys approached the place where John was standing and declaring that they were hungry demanded that he should at once go with them to the dining-room.