“Lucky I fell in with you, just as I did,” said Harvey, as he slowed up his stroke. “Lucky for both of us, I take it. I should have been stuck there all night if I hadn’t met you; and I don’t suppose you mind picking up a dollar, as long as you were going this way.” “No,” said the man, though there was a queer expression on his face. “I don’t mind,—and the fishing isn’t any too good these days.” “Got a smack, have you?” inquired Harvey. “No,” answered the other. “I don’t own any boat myself. But I sail with a man as owns his own boat, and I come in for a fair share of the fish.” “Where does she lie?” asked Harvey. The man waited a moment before answering. “She’s down among the islands somewhere,” he said, finally. “She’ll be in for me to-night or to-morrow. I’ve been visiting some relations of mine back of Bellport a few miles. So you’re a summer visitor at the island, are you?” “Yes,” replied Harvey, “I spend my summers there.” “Pretty quiet place, isn’t it?” said the man. “Mostly,” returned Harvey, “but not so quiet this year. We’ve had some exciting times there.” “Yes?” said the man. “How’s that?” He had slowed up, himself, in his rowing now. And if by chance the conversation had turned whither he had intended it should, there was no way that Harvey should know of that, for his back was toward the man and he could not see his face. “Why,” continued Harvey, “they caught the men that stole the Curtis diamonds over there; that is, they got two of them. A third one escaped. He was the worst of the three, they say.” The man in the bow had paused in his rowing. “The worst one got away, did he?” said he. “He did,” said Harvey. “It seemed one of them had the diamonds hidden in a house that every one thought was haunted. He was stopping at the hotel as a regular guest. And no one suspected him but Henry Burns. Then, when his confederates came, the detectives were lying in wait for them in the cellar. They nearly beat the detectives, though, at that. For they smashed the lanterns out—that is, one of them did, and made a run for it. The other one was hurt.” “Did he die?” asked the man, quickly. “No,” replied Harvey. “He’s all right, waiting trial along with the other one. We got him, too, just as he was nearly down to shore, where the other man was waiting to take him off in a boat. The third man escaped in his yacht. We only captured two.” The man in the bow had drawn his oars in, now, so that they rested along the side of the boat. His hands worked nervously together, and he half-rose in his seat. “Who’s ‘we’?” he asked, huskily. “Who did it—did you have a hand in it?” If, by chance, this moment was a crisis in the life of Jack Harvey, and if, by chance, he was in greater danger at this moment than he had ever been before in all his life, there was no shadow of it across his mind. He answered with a laugh: