We saw our mistake then, or thought we did. The turn of the creek was not up on the hill at all; it was down there in the bottomland. We could trace it as plain as day, because it was edged thick with willows. And, as we stood there looking at the place where the creek made its turn toward the west, we heard a noise of “chuck! chuck! chuck!” It was a spade chucking into soft soil. The Tough Customer and the Rat were there ahead of us! Well, there wasn’t anything for us to do but go home and let our treasure-hunting go for that day. We couldn’t go down there and fight the Tough Customer and the Rat, and we had no right to, because they had got to the place first. And we would not have fought them, anyway. A bunch of boys can’t drive away two desperate characters in any such way. So we sat on the hill awhile and listened to the Tough Customer and the Rat digging away, and then we got up and started for home. And it was time, anyway, because we had that long fight through the bottomland to get back to our motor-boat. On the way back to the boat we talked a lot about what we could do and what we couldn’t do, and we rested a lot and fooled around a lot, and the sun was getting low when we got back to the boat. And the first glance at the boat showed that some one had been there; some one had whacked the motor with an axe or a spade until it looked mighty much like a heap of junk. “The Tough Customer!” Wampus said, as mad as a hatter, and we all thought the same, but there was no way to prove it. The only thing we could do was to get into the boat and shove it into the current and float down home the best we could, urging the boat toward our shore with the oars. It was dark when we got home, and we were mighty tired and hungry, and the first person we saw was Wampus’s father. He was standing on the ripraps waiting for us. “About time!” he said. “I came up with Parcell and I’ve been waiting two hours for you to get home so you could run me back to town. What’s the matter with the boat?” “It’s busted,” Wampus said. “Can’t you fix it?” his father asked. “No; it’s too badly busted,” Wampus told him. “It’ll have to be mended down in town. I guess maybe it’ll cost thirty or forty dollars.” Mr. Smale did not like that a bit. “Very well, my son!” he said. “If that’s the case, that boat will remain ‘busted’ until you earn the money to have it mended. I’ve paid for repairing that boat as many times as I intend to. You are old enough to take care of that boat properly now, and it is your property. I’m through with it.” We all felt pretty sick. There wasn’t much use thinking of doing more treasure-hunting unless we had the motor-boat to go up-river in. Jibby was the first to say anything as we walked toward our cottages.