“Fine chance you got of finding anything in that swamp. There’s ten square miles of it, every square just like every other square, and a hundred little islands, and a thousand creeks and rivers winding through.” “You’re right,” agreed Average Jones. “It would take a month to search it. You spoke of a boat.” “It’s my notion they must have had a houseboat. They could a-rowed it up on the tide from the Kills—a little one. I never saw no tent with ’em. And they had to have something over their heads. The boat I seen ’em have was a rowboat. I s’pose they used it to go back and forth in.” “Thanks,” said Average Jones. “That’s a good idea about the houseboat.” On the following day this advertisement appeared in the newspapers of several shore towns along the New Jersey and Staten Island coast. A DRIFT—A small houseboat lost several days ago from the Hackensack Meadows. Fifty dollars reward paid for information leading to recovery. Jones, Ad-Visor, Astor Court Temple, New York. Two days later came a reply, locating the lost craft at Bayonne. Average Jones went thither and identified it. Within its single room was uttermost confusion, testifying to the simplest kind of housekeeping sharply terminated. Attempt had been made to burn the boat before it was given to wind and current, but certain evidences of charred wood, and the fact of a succession of furious thunder-showers in the week past, suggested the reason for failure. In a heap of rubbish, where the fire had apparently started, Average Jones found, first, a Washington newspaper, which he pocketed; next, with a swelling heart, the wreck of the pasteboard cabinet, but no sign of the strange valise which had held it. The “Mercy” sign was gone from the cabinet, its place being supplied by a placard, larger, in a different handwriting, and startlingly more specific: “DANGER! IF FOUND DESTROY AT ONCE. _Do Not Touch With Bare Hands_.” There was nothing else. Gingerly, Average Jones detached the sign. The cabinet proved to be empty. He pushed a rock into it, lifted it on the end of a stick and dropped it overboard. One after another eight little fishes glinted up through the water, turned their white bellies to the sunlight and bobbed, motionless. The investigator hastily threw away the label and cast his gloves after it. But on his return to the city he was able to give a reproduction of the writing to Professor Gehren which convinced that anxious scholar that Harvey Craig had been alive and able to write not long before the time when the houseboat was set adrift. CHAPTER V. THE MERCY SIGN—TWO