"Agnes! Agnes! They will catch us!" she shrieked, and ran madly after her sister.

Agnes thought of nothing, however, but the fact, as she believed, that their friends were near at hand. She climbed upon the highest boulder in the neighborhood and shrieked a welcome.

"Neale! Guardy! Luke! Here we are!" cried the wild girl. "Are the children safe? Tessie! Dot! Tell Agnes if you are all right!"

Her wild cry was echoed from the sea. She could even observe the _Isobel_ approaching. And the voices of the children and those of the boys and Mr. Howbridge were soon distinguishable.

Had the turtle fishers intended the two girls any harm, these cries from the water and the approach of the motor-boat must have warned the natives. Ruth and Agnes stood on the rock, and the fishermen approached to within a few yards of them.

They chattered much in Spanish, and then one spoke in English:

"Eet ees that the _senoritas_ haf friend-_amigo_-in the boat-no?"

"Tell them that we've got friends coming, _yes_!" exclaimed Agnes.

Ruth could remember just about enough Spanish to make herself understood. She told the fishermen their friends had been away in the motor-boat but were now arriving.

"Ah! If the senors should weesh help of any kind, we are of the willingness to do-_si_, _senorita_!" exclaimed the man, and led his comrades away along the beach just as the _Isobel_, by the light of the stars, shoved her nose into the little inlet.

The boys leaped ash.o.r.e the moment the motor-boat was near enough to the rocky landing. Such a noisy time as it was for a minute, with Tess and Dot shrieking greetings and the boys hurrahing! Suddenly Agnes was heard to say sharply:

"I like your impudence, Neale O'Neil! Who said you could do that, I'd like to know?"

"Don't lay it up against me," drawled her boy chum. "Really couldn't help it. I merely followed Luke's example."

"Come, come!" exclaimed Mr. Howbridge. "No quarreling there-especially on such a joyful occasion. Who were those men I saw?"

Agnes ran to meet him as he moored the boat and explained about the turtle fishers and told how frightened she and Ruth had been.

"Well, well! Perhaps they are harmless. But what do you say, boys? The engine is working like a charm, and the night is lovely. Had we better not head for St. Sergius before something worse happens to us?"

"Oh!" cried Ruth, clasping her hands, "that sounds sweet."

"Guess we all have got enough of Palm Island," said Luke.

The bigger girls had by this time got aboard the motor-boat to greet Tess and Dot. The four sisters cuddled down in the c.o.c.kpit and chattered like four magpies. There was so much to tell!

The _Isobel_ was therefore backed around and headed out of the little harbor once more. There was nothing much on the island that they would need. And, in any case, Mr. Howbridge considered it quite as well to get away without coming into contact with the turtle catchers.

Everything that had happened to the little girls had to be told over and over again, right down to the excitement of the grampus-which Dot insisted upon calling a grandpa.

"But he wasn't anything like Margaret and Holly Pease's grandpa-for he's real nice," added the littlest Corner House girl with her usual loose a.s.sociation of ideas. "He's got the nicest white hair and a gold-headed cane--"

"Not the grampus, Dot," groaned Tess, in despair.

"No; of course not that grandpa. Margaret and Holly Pease's. You've seen his gold-headed cane yourself, Tess Kenway. I wish you wouldn't always interrupt me. Now-now," and she yawned, "I forget-forget what I was going to say."

She proceeded almost instantly to go fast asleep with her head in Ruth's lap.

CHAPTER XXV

TYING ALL THE THREADS

The evening following, the _Isobel_ poked her nose into the pa.s.sage past the fort and ran into the harbor of St. Sergius. It was true that her appearance was not noted by the whole city and the welcome of the lost ones acclaimed by naval broadsides and the city factory whistles.

Nevertheless, the cause of their absence had been suspected and the boat of the harbor police ran alongside the _Isobel_ before she reached her usual mooring-buoy.

It seemed that Senor Benno had been to the other side of the island and had returned only that day and made inquiries about his friend, Mr.

Howbridge, and his boat. Some inquiries had been addressed to the authorities by people at the hotel, too, and the authorities were very glad indeed to learn of the safe return of the Americanos.

"They needn't fret," sighed Agnes. "They are not half as glad to have us back as we are to get back. What say, Ruthie?"

Ruth hugged Tess and Dot and nodded. It had been a very difficult experience for Ruth Kenway. Secretly she was determined that the smaller children should never be out of her sight again as long as they remained at St. Sergius.

Agnes and Neale were welcomed with much hilarity by the young people of their clique at the St. Sergius Arms, and when they had heard of all the wonderful experiences through which the absentees had pa.s.sed the two were more popular than ever.

Nalbro Hastings was really quite overpowering in her attentions to Agnes, and the latter was not a little proud that the wealthy Back Bay girl should think so much of her. Agnes had begun to realize, however, that Miss Hastings was really worth while and that she was simple in tastes and kindly of intention.

"I guess I like her because she's her," Agnes confessed to Neale. "You said she was a good scout, and she is. But it must just be wonderful after all to be so rich."

"Wealth won't keep you from getting your teeth knocked out if you fall from a horse," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "Sure, she's a good sport. But she's nowhere near as pretty as you are, Aggie."

Tess and Dot might have been inclined to brag a little about their adventures on "Plam" Island, as Dot insisted upon calling it. But they found waiting for them a letter from Sammy Pinkney, and that youthful scribe managed to invest his personal achievements with such a glamor of adventure that even the romance of being cast away on an uninhabited island paled into insignificance.

"_Dere Tess and Dot:_

"If mom wil let me alon and not mak me tak and lok into the spelin bok evry minit or so Ile try to tel you what has ben goin on here at Milton sins you went down to thos wes innies.

"Yore Belgn hare that you wen off and lef is alright. And Bily b.u.mps is alright. And Uncle Ruf is alright. And Tom Jonah is alright. And Linda is alright. And Scalawag is alright. And Missus Mack is alright. And Con Murpy's pig eat his way out of the pen and got in the Willow Wyte sewer and the street depatmen had to come and get him out and Con was mad. So evrybody is well.

"We got a dandy slid on Power Street and Shot Pendlton went through the barb wire fens but I diden and droped off and he was cut up sumpn ferce and got a black eye fightin a feller that said his father stole. But it was another feller done it and Shot's father went back to work for Kolbeck and Roods."

Right at this point the Kenway sisters and their boy friends, as well as Mr. Howbridge, became very much excited. It was the first intimation they had had of the result of the inquiry into the Pendleton's troubles.

Sammy Pinkney had nothing further to say about "Shot" Pendleton's father and his affairs, although his letter to Tess and Dot was both exhaustive and exciting. The next day's mail, however, brought a considerable communication from Mr. Howbridge's clerk in whose charge the lawyer had left the Pendleton case.

Ruth in particular had taken so deep an interest in the family that the news of the solving of the mystery about the stolen silks was a matter that held her attention, if it did not that of her sisters.

"I am so delighted to know that the shadow is lifted from that poor man's reputation," she said to Mr. Howbridge. "And all the while the man who appeared to befriend him was the guilty one!"

"You possess intuition developed to the nth degree, Ruth," said Mr.

Howbridge, smiling. "I remember that you said that Israel Stumpf seemed to be two-faced. And he was. Scandal in the Kolbeck family, my clerk writes. Kolbeck would not save Stumpf even to please his wife. The young man is out on bail, but he certainly will be punished for stealing."

"And have they taken Mr. Pendleton back?"

"So I am told here. At a little better salary and in a place of increased responsibility. Kolbeck is a decent man. He means to do what he sees is right, I fancy."