Richard fumbled with the little compa.s.s, rolling it from one hand to the other, without giving any thought to what he was doing. Presently it rolled away from him and Captain Kidd darted after it, striking it with his forepaws as he landed on it, and thus rolling it still farther till it stopped at the old man's feet.

Recalled to his surroundings in this way, Uncle Darcy glanced at the object indifferently, but something strangely familiar in its appearance made him lean closer and give it another look. He picked it up, examining it eagerly. Then he stood up and gazed all around as if it had dropped from the sky and he expected to see the hand that had dropped it.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded huskily, in such a queer, breathless way that Richard thought his day of reckoning had come. His sin had found him out. He looked at Georgina helplessly.

"Yes, tell!" she exclaimed, answering his look.

"I--I--just _played_ it was mine," he began. "'Cause the initials on it are the same as mine when we play pirate and I'm Dare-devil d.i.c.k. I was only going to keep it till we dug up the pouch again. We were keeping it to help find the pouch like Tom Sawyer did----"

It seemed to Richard that Uncle Darcy's hand, clutching his shoulder, was even more threatening than the Chinaman's of his nightmare, and his voice more imperative.

"Tell me! Where did you get it? _That's my compa.s.s!_ _I_ scratched those letters on that nut. 'D. D.' stands for Dan'l Darcy. I brought it home from my last voyage. 'Twas a good-luck nut they told me in the last port I sailed from. It was one of the first things Danny ever played with.

There's the marks of his first little tooth under those letters. I gave it to him when he got old enough to claim it, for the letters were his, too. He always carried it in his pocket and _he had it with him when he went away_. For the love of heaven, child, tell me where you found it?"

The hand which clutched Richard's shoulder was shaking as violently as it had the day the old rifle gave up its secret, and Richard, feeling the same unnamable terror he had felt in his nightmare, could only stammer, "I--I don't know. Captain Kidd found it."

Then all three of them started violently, for a hearty voice just behind them called out unexpectedly:

"Hullo, what's all the excitement about?"

It was Captain James Milford, who had strolled down from the bungalow, his hat stuck jauntily on the back of his head, and his hands in his pockets. A few moments before he had been scanning the harbor through a long spy-gla.s.s, and happening to turn it towards the dunes had seen the two children digging diligently with shovel and hoe.

"Looks as if they'd started to honey-comb the whole Cape with holes," he thought. "Curious how many things kids of that age can think of. It might be well to step down and see what they're about."

He put up the spy-gla.s.s and started down, approaching them on one side as the Towncrier reached them on the other.

"Now for a yarn that'll make their eyes stand out," he thought with a smile as he saw the old man sit down on the sand.

"Wonder if it would sound as thrilling now as it did when I was d.i.c.k's age. I believe I'll just slip up and listen to one for old times' sake."

Uncle Darcy let go of Richard's shoulder and turned to the newcomer appealingly.

"Jimmy," he said with a choke in his voice. "Look at this! The first trace of my boy since he left me, and they can't tell me where they got it."

He held out the compa.s.s and Mr. Milford took it from his trembling fingers.

"Why, _I_ remember this old trinket, Uncle Dan'l!" exclaimed Mr.

Milford. "You let me carry it in my pocket one day when I was no bigger than d.i.c.ky, here, when you took me fishing with you. I thought it was responsible for my luck, for I made my first big catch that day. Got a mackerel that I bragged about all season."

Uncle Darcy seized the man's arm with the same desperate grip which had held the boy's.

"You don't seem to understand!" he exclaimed. "I'm trying to tell you that _Danny_ is mixed up with this in some way. Either he's been near here or somebody else has who's seen him. He had this with him when he went away, I tell you. These children say they took it out of a pouch that the dog found. Help me, Jimmy. I can't seem to think----"

He sat weakly down on the sand again, his head in his hands, and Mr.

Milford, deeply interested, turned to the children. His questions called out a confusing and involved account, told piecemeal by Georgina and Richard in turn.

"Hold on, now, let's get the straight of this," he interrupted, growing more bewildered as the story proceeded. "What was in the pouch besides the gold pieces, the other money and this compa.s.s?"

"A letter with a foreign stamp on it," answered Richard. "I noticed specially, because I have a stamp almost like it in my alb.u.m."

On being closely cross-questioned he could not say positively to what country the stamp belonged. He thought it was Siam or China. Georgina recalled several names of towns partially scratched out on the back of the envelope, and the word Texas. She was sure of that and of "Ma.s.s."

and of "Mrs. Henry----" something or other.

"But the inside of the letter," persisted Mr. Milford. "Didn't you try to read that?"

"Course not," said Georgina, her head indignantly high. "We only looked at each end of it to see if the person's name was on it, but it began, 'Dear friend,' and ended, 'Your grateful friend Dave.'"

"So the letter was addressed '_Mrs._,'" began Mr. Milford, musingly, "but was in a tobacco pouch. The first fact argues that a woman lost it, the last that it was a man."

"But it didn't smell of tobacco," volunteered Georgina. "It was nice and clean only where Captain Kidd chewed the string."

"I suppose it didn't have any smell at all," said Mr. Milford, not as if he expected anyone to remember, but that he happened to think of it. A slowly dawning recollection began to brighten in Georgina's eyes.

"But it did have a smell," she exclaimed. "I remember it perfectly well now. Don't you know, Richard, when you were untying it at the top of the steps I said 'Phew! that makes me think of the liniment I bought from the wild-cat woman last night,' I had to hold the bottle in my lap all the time we were at the moving picture show so I had a chance to get pretty well acquainted with that smell. And afterwards when we were wrapping the tin foil around the pouch, getting ready to bury it we both turned up our noses at the way it smelled. It seemed stronger when the sun shone on it."

"The wild-cat woman," repeated Mr. Milford, turning on Georgina. "Where was she? What did you have to do with her? Was the dog with you?"

Little by little they began to recall the evening, how they had started to the show with the Fayal family and turned aside to hear the patent medicine man sing, how Richard and Georgina had dared each other to touch the wild-cat's tail through the bars, and how Georgina in climbing down from the wheel had stumbled over Captain Kidd whom they thought safely shut up at home.

"I believe we've found a clue," said Mr. Milford at last. "If anybody in town had lost it there'd have been a notice put up in the post-office or the owner would have been around for you to cry it, Uncle Dan'l. But if it's the wild-cat woman's she probably did not discover her loss till she was well out of town, and maybe not until she reached her next stopping-place."

"There's been nothing of the sort posted on the bulletin board at the post-office," said the old man. "I always glance in at it every morning."

Mr. Milford looked at him thoughtfully as if considering something. Then he said slowly:

"Uncle Dan'l, just how much would it mean to you to find the owner of that pouch?"

"Why, Jimmy," was the tremulous answer, "if it led to any trace of my boy it would be the one great hope of my life realized."

"You are quite sure that you _want_ to bring him back? That it would be best for all concerned?" he continued meaningly.

There was a silence, then the old man answered with dignity:

"I know what you're thinking of, and considering all that's gone before, I'm not blaming you, but I can tell you this, Jimmy Milford. If the town could know all that I know it'd be glad and proud to have my boy brought back to it."

He smote the fist of one hand into the palm of the other and looked about like something trapped, seeking escape.

"It isn't fair!" he exclaimed. "It isn't fair! Him worthy to hold up his head with the best of them, and me bound not to tell. But I've given my promise," he added, shaking his head slowly from side to side. "I s'pose it'll all work out for the best, somehow, in the Lord's own good time, but I can't seem to see the justice in it now."

He sat staring dejectedly ahead of him with dim, appealing eyes.

The younger man took a step forward and laid an arm across the bent shoulders.

"All right, Uncle Dan'l," he said heartily. "If there's anything under the sun I can do to help you I'm going to do it, beginning right now.

Come on up to the house and I'll begin this Sherlock Holmes business by telephoning down the Cape to every town on it till we locate this wild-cat liniment wagon, and then we'll get after it as fast as the best automobile in Provincetown can take us."

[Ill.u.s.tration]