“Say, was it you two that slept in Warren’s barn?” he asked.
“I guess it was his barn, sure enough,” replied Tom Edwards; “and wasn’t it a piece of hard luck that he didn’t catch us? We’d all be home by this time,—and they wouldn’t have lost the other boy. What a shame!”
“Things do happen queerly, sure enough,” said Will Adams. “But who’s this man asleep here?”
Tom Edwards turned and pointed to Artie Jenkins, shaking his finger at the sleeping figure.
“That chap,” he said, “is the cause of it all. Isn’t it a queer situation, that he should be here too?”
He told the story of their experience with Artie Jenkins.
“And what are you going to do with him?” asked Will Adams.
Tom Edwards knelt by the sleeper and turned down his shirt collar.
“Take a look here,” he said, pointing to the red marks upon the youth’s shoulder. “When I was out aboard Haley’s bug-eye,” he continued, “I used to spend hours thinking what I’d like to do to this fellow, if I ever found him. I had nine hundred and ninety-nine different ways all thought out of making him pay for my troubles. But”—Tom Edwards arose and folded his arms—“I think he’s had his punishment. Somebody put him just where he put us—aboard a dredger; and he must have struck a Tartar as bad as Haley. I think we’ll let him go. That is, if we can. Mr. Stanton, what do you say? We shall not need your help now, to get to Millstone. We’re going with this sloop to the Eastern shore; but we can’t leave this fellow, Jenkins, here, deserted.”
“Leave him to me,” replied Mr. Stanton. “He won’t be the first one we’ve had on our hands. I’ll go back and hitch up the horse and take him to the settlement, and we’ll ship him up the bay the first chance we get. But you ought to prosecute him. Ten to one, if he ever gets his health again, he’ll go back to the business.”