It was a long shot on his part, but it went straight to the mark. There was an awkward silence for almost a minute. Finally Tom said:
“There’s no use trying to keep a secret from him, Bob. He knows half already. We may as well tell him all, and see what he thinks of it.”
“Fire away, Tom,” said Bob. “No one was injured, anyway, so no great harm can come of it.”
So Tom related to Henry Burns the story of the night’s adventure. Henry listened with the greatest interest.
“I’d have given a good deal,” he said, “to see Jack Harvey when he found his cave blown up, with all their spoils along with it.”
When the story was finished, however, he was inclined to treat the matter more seriously than they had supposed he would.
“I’m afraid it’s a bad scrape to be in,” he said at length. “From what I have heard about our friend Harvey, I judge he is not one of the kind to let a thing of this sort go without paying somebody back for it. And I believe he is as sure to find out who blew up that cave as I am that I am sitting here.”
“How can that be?” asked Bob.
“I can’t say,” replied Henry Burns; “but if you keep your eyes open, you will see that he suspects you. I’ll warrant if we could see Jack Harvey now, we should see him out examining every inch of the shore, looking at the rocks on the beach for any paint that might be scraped off your canoe, and all such things as that. He is a shrewd one, and, when he has once satisfied himself that you and Tom wrecked his cave, why, I wouldn’t give a fig for your camp here,—that is, unless you propose to stay at home all the time to guard it.”
Strange to say, if they could have seen Jack Harvey just then, they would have witnessed a most startling confirmation of Henry Burns’s words. For Jack Harvey, at that moment, was at the shore once more. He was examining every inch of it. He was scrutinizing every rock along the beach. He was out among the ledges, looking carefully along their sides. He was searching here, and he was searching there,—but what he found he neither confided to his crew nor to any one else, but kept locked for the present in his own breast.