It so happened on this morning that Squire Brackett had important business that took him across to Cape Revere, on the mainland; and, as no steamer was due to run across till afternoon, and he must be there in the morning, he had arranged to sail over, taking advantage of the ebb-tide, which served strongest shortly after midnight. He was sleepy and surly as he came down the road, but paused a moment in his haste as he caught the gleam of light and heard the sound of subdued voices from the half-opened basement window.
Squire Brackett stole up softly and peered inside.
“Aha!” he exclaimed, under his breath. “So that’s the way the young rascals treat Colonel Witham, is it? I’ll just see about that in the morning. I fancy Colonel Witham will have something to say about this breaking and entering. I’d call him down now and trap them at their game, if it wasn’t that I’d lose a tide and a twenty-dollar bargain by it.”
And the squire tiptoed craftily away, chuckling maliciously to himself at the thought of how he would aid in punishing the boys on the morrow.
The second man of the three who were to figure in the night’s adventure had set out some two hours ago from afar down the island on the obscure western side. If any of the boys had seen him rowing in from a yacht anchored just off shore, had seen him land on the beach and drag his boat well up on it with supreme strength, and had seen him set off through the fields and along the strips of beaches of the coves, if any of the boys had seen all this and had looked carefully into his forbidding face, with its malign, evil expression, it is probable that that boy might and would have seen a striking resemblance to that same individual whom he had seen in flight on a certain evening, and have wondered and feared what business could bring him back to the scene of former danger at this hour.
Not being seen by them, nor by anybody else, the man slunk along, now running, as a clear stretch of field opened up before him, now thrusting his way through clumps of alders, now skirting the shore of some little inlet.
At length he struck fairly across the island, directly toward the very town from which, a few weeks ago, he had made so hurried an exit. Coming finally in view of the hotel, he squatted down in the grass and surveyed the prospect long and carefully before approaching nearer.
Squire Brackett, going on down to the hotel, would not have been so much at ease had he felt the presence of this evil figure, crouching within a few feet of him as he went by, and following stealthily in his footsteps, pausing as he paused, and watching him wonderingly as he peered into the window at the boys.
Now, as the squire went on his way, the man, himself, crawled up to the window and cast a quick glance within.
What he saw clearly startled him, for he had expected to find the hotel in utter darkness. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then quickly drew away from the window.