“Pretty shore along here, isn’t it?” he remarked a few moments later, as they stood in near to where the spruces came down close to the water’s edge, with the ledges showing below. “What’s that you were saying about coming by the boat oddly? She looks to me as though your folks must have paid a good price for her.” “Why, that’s the odd part of it,” answered Harvey. “The fact is, our folks didn’t pay for her at all. An old lady bought her for us. Made us a present of her. Perhaps you’d like to hear about it.” “Indeed I should,” replied the stranger. “It will while away the time to the Landing.” “You tell it, Henry,” said Harvey. So Henry Burns began, while the stranger stretched his legs out comfortably and listened. “Well,” said Henry Burns, “this yacht, the _Viking_, was named the _Eagle_ when we first saw her.” The stranger’s cigar was almost blazing with the vigour of his smoking. “She came into the harbour of Southport—that’s on Grand Island, below here, where we are bound—one day last summer, to pick up a guest at the hotel. There were two men aboard her, and it turned out that these two men, and the man they were after at the hotel, had committed a robbery at Benton. That’s way up the river. “Well, it’s a long story how they were discovered; but they were, and some jewels they had hidden were recovered. I said they were captured—but one, a man named Chambers, got away in this very yacht. But he came back, later, and set fire to the hotel for revenge. “That was along toward the end of the summer. Then it happened that Jack, here,—Jack Harvey,—captured the man, Chambers, in this yacht, down in a thoroughfare below Grand Island. Jack’s boat, the _Surprise_, was sunk there, when the two yachts crashed together, bow on.” “Poor old _Surprise_!” interrupted Jack Harvey. “Well, then,” continued Henry Burns, “there is a man over at Southport, Squire Brackett, that hates all us boys, just because he is mean. He told Witham, the hotel proprietor, that he had seen us boys in the hotel basement, shortly before the fire; and he and Witham had us accused of setting it, although everybody in Southport was indignant about it. And all this time, Jack was on the right track, because he had seen the man running from the fire and had followed him over to the other shore of the island, and recognized the boat he sailed away in. “So Jack sailed down the other side of the island, and captured the man, Chambers, in the thoroughfare; that is, Jack and his crew did. And they brought Chambers back just at the right time—and Squire Brackett and Witham were so ashamed they wanted to go and hide away somewhere.” The man they had taken aboard looked smilingly at Henry Burns. “That is certainly a remarkable story,” he said, knocking the ashes carelessly from the end of his cigar.