Three days passed. Will still remained at the coast-guard station, and men still hovered near. Tom came over once and said that it had been decided among a number of the fishermen that no great harm should be done to Will when they got him, but that he should be thrashed within an inch of his life. On the third day the coxswain said to Will: “I have a message this morning from the lieutenant, that he will be here by eleven o’clock. If you will write a line to your friend I will send it over by one of the men.” Tom arrived breathless two minutes before the officer. “My eye, I have had a run of it,” he said. “The man brought me the letter just as I was going to start in the boat with my uncle. I pretended to have left something behind me and ran back to the cottage, he swearing after me all the way for my stupidity. I ran into the house, and then got out of the window behind, and started for the moors, taking good care to keep the house in a line between him and me. My, what a mad rage he will be in when I don’t come back, and he goes up and finds that I have disappeared! I stopped a minute to take a clean shirt and my Sunday clothes. I expect, when he sees I am not in the cottage, he will look round, and he will discover that they have gone from their pegs, and guess that I have made a bolt of it. He won’t guess, however, that I have come here, but will think I have gone across the moors. He knows very well how hard he has made my life; still, that won’t console him for losing me, just as I am getting really useful in the boat.” The lieutenant landed from his cutter at the foot of the path leading up to the station. The sub-officer received him at the top, and after a few words they walked up to the station together. “Who are these two boys?” he asked as he came up to them. “Two lads who wish to enter the navy, sir.” “Umph! runaways, I suppose?”