When we went up to our house, May was standing at the gate looking for us. She waved her hand as soon as she saw us, and when we reached the gate she took Mr. Edwin Skreever’s hand and said some soft stuff to him, and then she said: “And you didn’t forget Rover, did you, Edwin?” “No,” he said, “I didn’t forget him. And I don’t believe I ever will.” But you can see why I felt scared when it seemed likely that the red-headed man with the scar over his eye in the Arkansas jail was the Red-Headed Bandit. Because we knew the Red-Headed Bandit was a mighty hard character. Of course, when you come to think of it, he did not steal Rover, but he might have stolen him if he had thought of it and had wanted a dog like Rover. CHAPTER X THE TREASURE HUNT The night after we had chased the Tough Customer and the Rat from Birch Island we had a meeting of the Land Pirate’s Treasure-Hunting and Exploration Company in the shaft-house of the Five Friends’ Worm Mine. The Worm Mine was something we had started a few days earlier. Everybody knows it is hardly worth while going fishing unless you have worms or minnows for bait. Minnows are the best bait, but they are hard to get and harder to keep, so nearly everybody uses worms. When everything is moist, you can dig worms almost anywhere on the island, but, when a dry spell comes on, the ground gets drier and drier, and the worms go down so deep that you can dig for an hour out back of the cottages and not get a worm. Then there is only one place on the island where you can get worms. That is in what we all called Mosquito Hollow. This year the worms went deep, and we had to try Mosquito Hollow for them. Jibby was with us when we said we guessed we would have to try Mosquito Hollow for worms, and the minute we said it he sat down on a log of driftwood and closed his eyes and laid his finger alongside of his nose. “What are you doing that for?” Wampus Smale asked him. “For worms,” Jibby said. “Trying to smell where they are?” Wampus asked, laughing at him. “Maybe so,” Jibby Jones said. “I want to do my share when it comes to getting worms, and you know I can’t go to Mosquito Hollow. I wonder--” “Why can’t you go to Mosquito Hollow?” Wampus asked. “I might stand it if it wasn’t for my spectacles,” Jibby said. “The mosquitoes get in behind my spectacles and I can’t smack them. And then I swell up.” This was true. Jibby always wore tortoise-shell rim spectacles, and he did swell up when a mosquito bit him. “I’m ashamed to swell so much,” Jibby said, “but I can’t help it. I think perhaps my grandchildren won’t, if I ever have any grandchildren, because the swelling seems to be going out of our family. When I get a mosquito bite, it only swells as big as a walnut, but father’s and mother’s bites swell almost as big as apples, and my grandfather used to swell as big as a wash-basin. I don’t know how big a mosquito bite would have swelled on great-grandfather. But I wonder--”