We asked him if he knew much about Greenland, and he said he had been born in a house right about where we were sitting, which would be just about where the house was on the treasure map. So we asked him if anybody named M’rell had ever lived in that house, or in Greenland, or anywhere that he knew of. He said never. He said nobody named that had ever been anywhere that he had ever heard of. So then we told him about the land pirate and the treasure, and he said it was all nonsense, because if anybody from down Arkansas way had ever been anywhere around there, he would have known it. So we told him not to say anything about the treasure, and told him that was what the Tough Customer and the Rat were after, and he said he would keep mum about it and sort of keep an eye on the Tough Customer and the Rat and let us know if anything happened. CHAPTER XV THE GRAPE TREE Well, one afternoon--it was about two weeks later--I was sitting on the grass where the mud cove is, just below our cottage up there on our Birch Island, and Jibby Jones was sitting beside me. We weren’t doing anything but waiting, or nothing much else, but we had three or four empty baskets and a rake and an axe beside us. We were waiting for Uncle Beeswax, because he was going to take us to get wild grapes. One day, just after we had met him at Greenland Creek Uncle Beeswax had stopped at Birch Island to see if our folks wanted any honey or beeswax. Generally, when he stopped at our island he went right past us boys and up to the cottages, but since we had saved him from the Tough Customer he liked us, I guess. That day Jibby Jones was rigging up a trot-line, and after Uncle Beeswax had told us that the Tough Customer and the Rat were still digging at the creek bank, and had said, a couple of times, “My, what a nose! My, what a noble nose!” he put down his baskets and looked at what Jibby was doing, and shook his head. “Who taught you that way to tie hooks on a trot-line?” he asked. “Nobody did,” Jibby said in his solemn way. “I evolved this way out of my own head.” “Well, it is no way at all,” said Uncle Beeswax. “Let me show you.”