“Go tell Jim Randall to come right here.--As soon as you’ve paid him,” he continued, turning to the young men, “you get out of this place. If the court sat this month, I’d have you up before it, but we’re not going to keep you here at the public expense, and you’ve got to make yourselves scarce. And I want every man, woman, and child in this town to understand,” he said, looking around at the people, “that not one of them is to harbor these fellows for a minute, or to speak to them, or to have anything to do with them. Here, Jim,” he said, as that individual approached, “what do these scamps owe you for your guns up to to-day?” Jim mentioned the sum. “Pay it!” was the command of the colonel to the young men. “Now pay for your boat. Here’s the man you hired it of. Now go!” roared the colonel, when this last order had been obeyed. The young men had brought a couple of knapsacks with them from the boat, and picking these up, they went. They had sense enough to see that there was nothing for them to do but to obey the autocrat of Titusville. These two miscreants had not been gone more than half an hour before Coot Brewer wandered into the town. He was very tired, and looked warm. When he entered the hotel, he was greeted with shouts of derision, and the colonel at once began to storm at him. “Coot Brewer!” he cried, “if ever you take anybody in a boat again from this place, I’ll have you horsewhipped!” Coot sat down, and smiled a languid smile. “You don’t ketch me takin’ out city chaps like them,” he said. “They draws ’gators.” At this another shout of laughter arose. “You dunderhead!” cried the colonel. “Don’t you know that if you’d fired at them, every ’gator would have skedaddled?” “Yes,” said Coot, “a-carryin’ off us fellers in their jaws.” Scolding and derision had very little effect on the brother of John Brewer. The colonel roared out his strongest condemnation of Coot’s conduct in deserting the boys, and everybody laughed at him for being afraid of the alligators, but the placid Coot smiled through it all. He had got safely away from the ’gators in Lowper’s Creek, and he did not care what happened now. Just before supper, there was another arrival in the town. This was the yacht containing the family-party which the boys had seen on Indian River. They came up to the hotel in a little procession, with their bundles, their valises, their baskets, their umbrellas, their fishing-rods, their canes they had cut, the little alligators they were carrying home in boxes, the shells they had picked up, and all the curious things they had gathered on their trip. The colonel sat, with an austere countenance, and watched them approaching. They had not stopped in Titusville when they passed through before, having gone directly on board the boat, which they had engaged by letter, and it soon appeared that they did not intend to stop now.