There was a place there where the arum and pickerel weed came close to the shore, but the water was two or three feet deep, and tied to a tree there was a shanty-boat--one of the smallest and worst old shanty-boats I ever saw. It did not look over ten feet long, and it wasn’t more than five feet wide, with not a window in it, and the deck not over two feet wide. The boards of which it was made were thin and old and warped, and the only power was a ten-foot pole with a board nailed on one end. When he came to the shanty-boat, the Tough Customer stopped to untie his shore line and threw it aboard. He did not say another word. He took his ten-foot pole from the roof of the shanty-boat and braced it against the shore and pushed, and the boat slithered among the weeds and glided out from the shore. We stood and watched until the shanty-boat was out in the middle of the slough, where the current caught it and swung it slowly downstream. Then the Tough Customer rested and looked toward us, and swore at us strong and steady for a long while, and Wampus’s uncle said it was all over, and we went home. I looked Rover’s paw and ear over, and saw they were not so bad, so I tied him up again and went to bed. Of course, mother asked all about what had happened, and said she had been frightened when she heard the gunshots, but she was glad everything was all right and the tramps were off the island. The next morning there was only one thing for me to do if I wanted to have mother let me keep Rover on the Island, and that was to explore for dead fish and get them out of the way. So we all went--all five of us boys. We went down the chute side of the island first, but we didn’t find a single dead fish, because all the folks know about Rover, and they don’t leave any dead dogfish or other kinds on shore when they catch them. So we got as far as the end of the island, downstream, and started along up the slough side of the island, and all of a sudden Wampus stopped short. “Look there,” he said, bending down and pointing. “There’s that Tough Customer’s shanty-boat. He didn’t quit the island. He only floated down and landed lower down.” We all bent low and saw the shanty-boat. It was in a sort of small cove, where the willows must have hid it from the slough, and I don’t suppose anybody could have seen it from the island except from the very spot where we were. “Come on!” I whispered. “Let’s go and get Orph and your Uncle Oscar, and tell them.” But Jibby Jones put out a hand and held me back. “This doesn’t look right,” he said, shaking his head. “This looks evil to me. Those men were told to get off the island, and they said they would get off the island, and there’s no honest reason why they should be on the island. All they had to do when they were out in the slough last night was to let their shanty-boat drift and they would have gone on down past here. They must mean some devilment on the island, and we ought to know what it is.”