“Well, I won’t urge him,” said Harvey, abruptly. “But I tell you what I will do,” he added, “I’ll sell you the _Surprise_. She’s a grand good boat, too; and she’ll be as good as ever when she is put in shape.—No, I won’t do that, either,” he exclaimed, after a moment’s thought. “That is, not this summer. I’ve promised her to the crew, and I won’t go back on it. No, I won’t sell you the _Surprise_, either.” “Would you let me hire either of them for the season?” ventured Harry Brackett. Harvey hesitated for a moment, with visions of the money it would bring temptingly before his mind’s eye. But the remembrance of the loyalty of his crew was still fresh in his mind. “No,” he said, determinedly. “I won’t do it.” Which was a lucky determination, if he had but known it. “See here,” said young Harry Brackett, lowering his tone, and making one final desperate effort to shake Harvey’s resolution, “I’ll make you a better offer than that. I’ll pay you and Henry fifteen hundred dollars for the boat between you. You can get him to do it if you only try. And I’ll give you seventy-five dollars for yourself, and you needn’t say anything about it.” A moment later, Harry Brackett was picking himself up off the ground and rubbing one more sore spot. “Hang it all!” exclaimed Jack Harvey, as he strode away, “I needn’t have hit him—but he made me mad clear through. I owed it to him, anyway.” And so Harry Brackett, eying the other angrily, swore a new resolve of revenge on Harvey and all the crowd of campers and cottagers. “Why, Jack,” said Henry Burns later that day, when he and Harvey were talking it over, “don’t you suppose it was some kind of a queer joke on Harry Brackett’s part? What does he want of the _Viking_? He couldn’t sail her if he had her, and in the second place, I don’t believe he ever had so much money in all his life.” “That’s just the queerest thing about it,” replied Harvey. “He wasn’t joking and he was in dead earnest. He either wants the boat, or knows somebody else who does. It is queer, but he meant it.” “Well, I can’t guess it,” said Henry Burns. “Let’s go and catch a mess of flounders for supper.” CHAPTER X. MR. CARLETON ARRIVES “How d’ye do, squire,” bawled Captain Sam Curtis to Squire Brackett, a morning or two later, as the squire stopped for a moment at the door of the captain’s shop, where he was busily engaged sewing on a sail which he was refitting for the yacht _Surprise_, for the boys. “Good morning, Captain Sam,” replied the squire. “You’re busy as usual, I see.” “Yes,” said Captain Sam, “just helping the boys out a little. Smart chaps, those youngsters. Why, they went to work and raised that ’ere yacht down there in the Thoroughfare, and they’re cleaning her up in great shape; and I vow, when they get her painted and these good sails on her, she’ll be every bit as good as new. And she was always a right smart boat.”