“What’s that, old timer?” asked the thin man, grinning slightly.
“You’re on a piece of the earth I own. Get off it,” said John Bromley, advancing truculently. “This dock is mine—and I own to the road. You git back to the road and stay there.”
The man eyed him for a few seconds, as though to see whether he really meant the command, or not. It was quite plain that Bromley meant it. He was beginning to roll up his sleeves, and old as he was he looked to be a bad man to tackle.
“Oh! very well,” said the stranger, backing off. “No offense meant.”
“And that’s lucky, too,” growled John. “For if you was meanin’ offense I might come out into the road to you, at that!”
The stranger said no more, but gradually “oozed off the scenery,” as Bromley told the boys afterward. “But that feller’s got some reason for nosin’ around here,” the old boatman added, as he helped fasten the motor iceboat to the spiles of the dock. “I didn’t like his looks—not a little bit.”
“Do you suppose it is somebody trying to see what kind of an invention you have here, Dannie?” asked the awed Billy.
For the second trip of the motor iceboat had convinced the younger Speedwell lad that his brother was a marvel. He wasn’t talking much about that trip, but if John Bromley had considered the speed of the Follow Me quite surprising, how much more impressed was Billy—and even Dan himself.
It was true they had had a favoring breeze—and a stiff breeze, too. The wind would have driven the boat at high speed, alone. But with the auxiliary motor at work the Follow Me had traveled at a breath-taking pace. She had gone the length of Island Number One, and the island beyond it, rounded the farther end of that second island, and come rushing back down the river to John Bromley’s dock in an almost unbelievably short time.
“It doesn’t matter who the fellow was,” said Dan, finally; “you know we don’t want anybody examining this boat. John understands that; don’t you, John?”