A small, stout man sitting on a barrel looked up as he approached.
“Hey,” began Tom, “were you here this morning when that motor yacht left?”
The stout man, with a whimsical light in his eye, was gazing hard into the boy’s face.
“Yer hat is a great distance up from the ground, me lad,” he remarked, casually. “Kin ye see acrost to the lake from there?”
“Oh, cut it out. I’m no lighthouse!” snapped Tom, forgetting politeness in his ruffled state of mind. “Were you——”
The stout man stopped him.
“I were, for sure,” he answered, emphatically.
“See any boys on board?”
“I did—sure ag’in.”
“Been gone long?”