Chance favoured him the very day following, when young Harry Brackett, having some work to do about the garden, threw off his jacket and waistcoat and left them carelessly over the back of a chair in the kitchen. The squire, passing through the room, espied a letter exposed from an inner pocket of the waistcoat. With no compunctions, he took it out, opened it and read it. The letter was addressed to “Mr. Harry Brackett, Southport, Grand Island, Me.,” and read as follows:
“If you have not already made the offer for the Viking, don’t bother about it; for I am planning a visit to Southport, myself. Much obliged to you for your trouble, in any case. Please don’t mention the matter, however.
“Hoping I may be of service to you at some time,
“Very truly yours, “Charles Carleton.”
“So, ho!” exclaimed the squire, softly. “Been lying to me again, has he? I am not so surprised at that. But what did he do it for?”
The squire’s first impulse was to call Harry into the house and demand an explanation. Then his curiosity led him to alter that determination. Who was this Mr. Carleton? Why was he trying to buy a boat through his son? Why didn’t he want the matter mentioned? What were the relations between this Mr. Carleton and his son? Well, Mr. Carleton, whoever he was, was coming to Southport. The squire would wait and see him for himself.
He did not have long to wait, either, for the very next day he met Mr. Carleton face to face. The squire was waiting in the post-office for the evening mail when there came in with Jeff Hackett, in whose packet he had sailed across from Bellport, a tall, gentlemanly appearing man, dressed in a natty yachting-suit of blue, his face chiefly characterized by a pair of cold, penetrating blue eyes and a heavy blond moustache.
“Good evening, sir,” he said, with the easy air of a man of the world, and, withal the least deference to the pompous individual whom he addressed, which was not lost on a man of the squire’s vanity. “Beautiful place, this island. You should be proud of it, sir.”
“Good evening,” replied the squire, formally, but warming a little. “Yes, sir, we are proud of Southport.”
“True,” he continued, swelling out his waistband, “it does not afford all the opportunities for a man of capital to exert his activities; but it has its advantages.”
“Which I judge you have made some use of, sir,” remarked the stranger, in an offhand, easy way, smiling.
The squire beamed affably.