Part 40 (1/2)

”No, let them go--it's the easiest way,” advised Jack. ”Cora has the papers.”

”But maybe they've hurt Denny!” said Walter.

”I'm all right,” a.s.serted the fisherman, as he slowly arose. ”He just cut off my wind for a minute. I'm all right. But where are the papers?” and he looked about the floor, on which were scattered pieces of the broken red oar.

”They're safe,” answered Jack. ”Cora, my sister, has them. Guess we'd better look for her though.”

There was no need, as Cora, holding the papers in her hand, re-entered the cabin at that moment. Only one edge of the legal doc.u.ments was burned, and no real harm had been done.

While the motor girls, and the boys and the neighboring men, who had come to the rescue all but too late, were looking at one another there was heard, at the dock, the puffing of a motor boat.

”There they go!” exclaimed Walter.

”Well, that's the best way,” said Jack. ”We're glad to get rid of them.”

”How did you girls get here?” asked Ed.

”How was it you boys _didn't_ get here?” demanded Cora, still panting from her exertions.

Explanations were then in order. I will be as brief with them as I can. How the girls came to go to the cabin is already known. And how the boys, foolishly perhaps, went out on the bay while waiting for Denny to come back, and how they became stalled, is likewise known to my readers.

In the meanwhile Denny came to his cabin.

Then came the unexpected help in the shape of a tow from the plotters themselves.

”They left us at Buler's,” said Jack, ”and then we had our own troubles. We tried to get a boat to come on, for the _Dixie_ still refused to move. But we couldn't get one for love or money, and it was too rough to row.”

”What did you do?” asked Cora, looking at Denny, who was examining the broken red oar.

”We hired a horse and carriage, and came around the land way,” replied Walter. ”It took us a long time, too, for we missed the road.”

”But we finally got here,” spoke Ed.

”And just in time,” added Cora. ”We were wild about you--couldn't imagine what happened.”

”Didn't you get the note we left pinned to the door?” asked Dray of Denny.

”Nary a note,” he said.

Later it was found where it had blown into a clump of bushes. So that accounted for Denny's not being warned in time.

”But everything seems to be coming out right,” said Cora, with a rather wintry smile. All the girls were pale, and a trifle weak. The boys, too, were tired.

”And what are those papers?” asked Jack, taking them from Cora.

”Those prove Mrs. Lewis's t.i.tle to the land the plotters tried to get,” she said. ”Oh, I'm so glad we found them.”

”Who found them?” asked Walter, giving Cora's hand a surrept.i.tious squeeze.

”They were in the red oar,” said Denny. ”And to think I never knew it!

They were there all these years, and all of us worrying about them and wondering where they were. But I understand now. Grandfather Lewis must have hollowed out a hole in the handle, hid the papers in it, and then plugged it up. Then he gave the oar to me to keep. I remember well at the time he said it would prove valuable some day. I often wondered what made the oar lighter than it had been. It was because it was hollowed out.